Rating: *1/2
Starring: Jessica Morris, Peter Guillemette, Patrick Cavanaugh
Starring: Jessica Morris, Peter Guillemette, Patrick Cavanaugh
Well, boys and girls, can you name that one infamous hockey mask-wearing slasher known to lurk around the woods killing teenagers? If you answer 'Trevor Moorhouse' then I'm both impressed you even remember the guy, and disappointed coz you've probably never seen a Friday The 13th film. You're an anomaly of a slasher fan and that makes me sad...
So in this direct-to-video cheapo, trainee camp counselors fixing up Camp Placid Pines are disappearing one by one after bringing up a campfire boogieman named Trevor Moorhouse, who may or may not be responsible for cutting down the local population for a few years now. As suspicion variously falls on one another, our heroine Julie decides to do some amateur sleuthing to try and figure out who could be responsible for the potential murders going around the camp. And apparently this includes scenes of imagined scenarios wherein other characters are committing the murders to throw us off, and hilarious voice-over work whenever a letter is involved...
Bloody Murder (2000) was released around the time Scream (1996) made witty and satirical deconstruction of horror flicks look like the hottest thing to do, and it often feels like it with scenes shamelessly ripping and calling out slasher tropes, most of it coming from the resident horror nerd Tobe, who bemoans wry remarks like "...a great time to be walking through this camp alone. Why don’t you just paste a sign on my back that says ‘Please Kill Next’." (Yes, dude. We get it. You're trying to be Scream (1996)'s Randy) The result is nowhere as engaging nor as clever as it wanted to be, considering the whole murder mystery angle is clumsily handled with too many obvious red herrings and an acting tone dangerously leaning towards parody, courtesy of its eight-grade level writing.
Nothing simply works here, not even the slasher elements which are awfully chaste by dead teenager flick standards; there's hardly a drop of blood for a good deal of these kills, no workable stalking or chase scenes involving a hapless victim and our masked murderer, and the raunchiest this movie ever got is a make-out session in the woods where no one got naked. Plus, the whole 'Trevor Moorhouse' shtick just isn't cutting it with how much the plot tried making him a household name here, making a mountain out of a molehill when the guy hardly even has the presence that demands attention, even more so when the killer ends up being someone we hardly paid attention to. But, hey, the movie seems to be dead set on making Trevor Moorhouse the next slasher star, so much so they're willing to risk a dumb twist ending featuring the hockey-masked maniac. (May have worked, though. This damn movie got two sequels, believe it or not...)
Perhaps the aim here was to be so bad it's good, but all I got is a whole lot of bad and very little of the good. If any. Bloody Murder (2000)? More like a bloody waste of film reel...
Bodycount:
1 male hacked up with a chainsaw
1 female stabbed with a kitchen knife
1 male shot to death with arrows
1 male had his throat cut with a kitchen knife
1 male gets a lawn dart thrown through his back
1 male found hanging dead atop a tree
1 male killed with a chainsaw
Total: 7
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