Slaughterhouse Rulez

A great cast full of easily recognisable faces, a mildly interesting plot and some funny lines scattered throughout (thank goodness for British humour) but in all honesty, the only terrifying thing is the film overall. Somewhat enjoyable if you don't take ANY of it seriously.

This was a real mixed-bag of a film. Tries to be a horror-comedy without being particularly scary or funny and uses elements we've seen from stories set at boarding schools like this many times before.

My main issue is the film's first half which does a rather sloppy job setting up the overall story, characters and elements that lead to later payoffs. It also treats the audience like they're stupid at points, showing flashbacks of scenes that literally occurred five minutes beforehand as if we've already forgotten them. This combined with awful dialogue and an odd structure make the first 45 minutes an extremely tedious watch.

When the second half kicks in with the proper introduction of the creatures it becomes a lot more enjoyable, as it truly embraces the gore-fest it becomes. On a production side it's all fairly competent with decent direction and visual effects for the most part. All the acting is fine, with the ever-charming Simon Pegg and Asa Butterfield putting in the best performances.

Overall, if the film had a better script with some more interesting characters who don't all have surface-level motivations then this may have turned out to be a enjoyable experience. Alas, it feels like a wasted opportunity.

As one who loves 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz' this was a bit disappointing. Pegg, Frost, and Sheen play supporting characters more or less, while the students are the main cast. They unfortunately don't bring enough comedy or drama to make you feel invested in them. And it feels as though two thirds of the movie goes by until something actually happens and it gets going.

Wasn't terrible or anything, but as a comedy/horror it just doesn't have enough of either.

This film seemed to be running in a lot of directions at once without getting anywhere.

It oscillated constantly between trying to be a farce, a horror flick, a comedy, a romance, a social commentary, and an environmental movie.

The problem is while it was bouncing around trying to condemn fracking, homophobia, teen suicide, classicism, British imperialism, private education, capitalism, and a bunch of other stuff, it gave short shrift to character and plot development.

The saddest part of all this is they had some stellar actors to work with, including: Michael Sheen, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Margot Robbie.

With that kind of star power this should have been a slam dunk, but it simply wasn't.

Instead of a hilarious horror comedy; this ended up being a big tangled mess of missed opportunities.

Between the plethora of plot points and the massive cast of characters, there was simply too much going on for the audience to get much out of the film.

When you're asked to care about everything and everyone all at once, the sad reality is you end up caring about none of it because Slaughterhouse Rulez never gives you a chance to get invested in any of the storylines beyond the surface level.

It's too bad someone with a stronger vision who understands that less is sometimes more had not gotten ahold of this script.

If someone had simply paired it down to a more streamline concept, this could have been spectacular.

Instead, it mostly ended up being a slightly frustrating and therefore largely forgettable mess.

When I first heard about this movie I was super excited being a huge fan of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. It started off pretty funny but as the movie went into the 2nd half it all started going downhill. If Edgar Wright wrote or directed this it would have been SO much better. If you're as big a fan of Simon and Nick as I am it's worth watching once but I probably won't ever watch it again