Here goes a unique idea for a horror movie as presented to us the by the inspired fable weavers behind this Lionsgate joint ‘Silent Scream’. Take a bunch of college aged young adults whose hormones are on fire, send them to a remote location where cell phones don’t work so good and have them get picked off one by one by a mysterious unseen killer, until there is only one final girl left standing between our heinous villain and a total wipeout. What a concept. Then let’s give it a title that has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with ANYTHING in the movie. Let us not forget about the twist at the end shall we? No we shan’t.

Professor Barren (Peter Carey) is droning on in front of his class about something having something to do with serotonin levels or something. You see just like his class I wasn’t paying a lick of attention, but it wasn’t completely necessary that I pay attention since I was still alive 85 minutes later. After he finishes, he thanks his class for their participation and congratulates them for assisting him in his ‘research’ and to show his gratitude he’s allowing these randy twenty-somethings to use his remote cabin for a weekend of good clean safe fun. Just so you know, Nicole (Melissa Schuman) and Mark (Scott Vickaryous) used to be a couple but have now broken up leading to what will be an uncomfortable situation once they and the dozen or so kids get up north. Mark has a ménage-a-trois planned out with a couple of hotties though which should help him get over the pain of losing his girl. So one truck load of kids heads up right after class to get a head start on the debauchery, with the other to follow the next morning. Pretty much that whole first load of kids gets slaughtered in the first fifteen minutes of this flick which had me thinking this is like the shortest movie ever because I completely forgot about the other truckload.

Now the movie gets starts getting stupid. The second carload of kids passes a broke down car that belonged to one of the students and final girl Nicole goes ‘Isn’t that so and so’s car?’ Her best friend Chloe (Shanti Lowry) tells her no, though it obviously is, but because her butt hurts and she doesn’t want to stop. When they get to the cabin

they find out that nobody but nobody is there except for her ex, Mike. They seemed marginally concerned, but not much. They also find various body parts but blame it on those crazy kids playing practical jokes. Har Har! On a whim Nicole decides to back track to the broke down car which houses super scared Black Guy Steve (Walter Harris) who is warning of the presence of a killer. Now mind you, there is nothing wrong with Steve, but Nicole had to practically carry his ass from the car to van because Steve was too much of a bitch to walk under his own power. While Nicole was gone, a couple more kids get killed and when Nicole drives back up the surviving kids are outside on the porch looking scared. Nicole wants to know what’s up and they tell to go upstairs and look. Guys, there are two slaughtered dudes in the house, I’ll take your word for it, but no, they make Nicole go up and see for herself while they sit and wait. Then they take a seat and decide to formulate a plan. Dude, the plan would have been the minute Nicole came back with the van, we jump in, tell the bitch to stand on it and get the f**k out. That’s the plan. Needless to say the killer proceeds to kill the rest of kids in various fashion leading to a final showdown between that dude, whose identity I’m guessing is fairly obvious and Nicole, who has a black belt in Jujitsu.

Originally entitled ‘The Retreat’ which makes a whole lot more sense than ‘Silent Scream’, this was about as run of the mill as slasher flicks get. Except for the twist, but we won’t get into that. Everything about this flick grabbed clichéd bits and pieces from other slasher flicks, good and bad, and cobbled them together to form a movie all its own. And exactly how horny are young adults today? Goodness Gracious! I mean I’m not too far in age removed from these cats but if this, and similar movies are any indication of real life, I was born fifteen years too late because young women today offer absolutely NO resistance. Damn.

On the plus side of things, the acting in ‘Silent Scream’ was slightly above amateurish, Directors Matt Cantu and Lance Kawas seemed to halfway know what they doing in pacing and framing of their film, it was filmed locally in Michigan so I gotta throw some love out their way for that and as such the bitter cold that we have to deal with on the regular was used to good effect. They also managed to convince most of their actresses to get naked which never shakes out to be a bad thing, though sadly they couldn’t convince Shanti Lowry to drop her top, which fills me sadness.

Unfortunately a few random bare breast, a kung fu kicking final girl and twist from left field can’t save a narrative that is all at once a complete retread and filled with incredibly stupid people to boot. ‘Silent Scream’ adds absolutely nothing new to a genre which may have nothing new that can be added to it.