Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Jake (Paul Wesley) is a down on his luck Hollywood director until his agent (Nestor Carbonell) hooks him up with a reality TV show gig somewhere in North Dakota… I think… where he is going to chart the progress of some high school hockey team’s quest for the championship in this horror/comedy from reality TV show director Jeff Fisher calling itself ‘Killer Movie’.

Before Jake even touches ground in this town, some poor kid has already gotten decapitated, a situation which might’ve had me alter my travel plans personally speaking, but Jake has a job to do. I should mention that this kid was played by Leighton Meester who is kind of popular with the young folks and even made her way on the box cover. If your only reason for picking up this flick is to peer at Leighton Meester you might want to look elsewhere. Try ‘Drive Thru’ to get your Leighton Meester horror flick fix on. Anyway Lee (Cyia Batton), Jake’s hot but incredibly super bitchy producer, could care less about the hockey squad’s chase for the cup and instead wants Jake and his crew to follow the townsfolk’s reaction to the return of some convicted murderer which Jake isn’t all that interested in doing, not that Jake’s interest are going matter all that much because as it so happens his crew, and the members of this town, are getting thinner and thinner as time goes on since there’s a masked homicidal maniac on the loose.

Even though the concept behind this horror/comedy is a good one, to be honest with you ‘Killer Movie’ failed to move me in any conceivable direction, good or bad. I have been sitting here staring at my keyboard for like the last twenty minutes attempting to think of something relevant or clever or informative to say about the value of this movie and I got nothing. Absolutely Nothing. This mental vacuum I sometimes experience after watching a movie used to be relatively rare but the truth of the matter is that it is happening more and more. Perhaps its age creeping up on me, or maybe I’ve seen too many generic movies and have finally run out of things to say or is it the simple fact that movies, for the most part, have run out of steam. I don’t know.

But back to ‘Killer Movie’ itself. It’s not bad movie really, I mean I’ve seen way, way worse movies than this one. It is well shot, has high production values, it well paced though it is a little light on the gore and sex for a movie of this genre. It also has a fine cast of very pretty, very capable white kids who could easily go straight from this movie to the new ‘Melrose Place’ and not miss a single beat. Plus it has Jason London amongst its cast, an actor who is amassing a list of credits so vast that it even has Steven Seagal concerned. But despite the somewhat unique angle on the slasher flick genre and a couple of humorous bits here and there, ‘Killer Movie’ is still a run of the mill, lackluster slasher flick.

Shadowy characters still run in front of cameras behind orchestra hits. Stupid characters still go to investigate weird sounds in basements, final girls disable crazy killers and run off instead of finishing crazy killers off and there are hero boys to deal with as we would as expect with none of this offering anything particularly new to a very, very tired genre. Plus our mysterious killer, in addition to having a fairly obvious identity, kind of sucked.

‘Killer Movie’ is not totally devoid of value and is fairly solid entertainment for what it delivers but I’m thinking your entertainment value of this movie increases exponentially the closer you are to the age of fifteen and probably decreases drastically the further you get away from the age of thirty five since that would indicate that you’ve probably seen this movie many, many, many times before.