With this rating I am attempting to account for both the enjoyment provided by the film and its objective quality, which is nowhere near the illustrious standards of mediocrity.
This is one of those films that are so unintentionally funny, that you have to wonder if this wasn't the plan to begin with or a practical joke played on the cast and crew by writer/producer Luc Besson.
His involvement is the most shocking part. One can hardly imagine him sitting at his desk putting pen to paper and letting the words pour out on the page and not realizing what he is doing. Given the very repetitive dialogue and story structure, seemingly improvised lines and thin plotting, I have to assume that he only "wrote" a couple posted notes that he then stuck to the director's fridge.
Overall this a wonderful so-bad-it's-good film, because while the editing is tasteless and the acting atrocious -the actors cannot even pronounce words- it is very easy to follow and understand how the filmmakers are failing at what they are trying to accomplish. There are a couple of technical mistakes but -outside of the writing and acting- what makes the final product baffling are the creative decisions.
The very concept of the film is self-aggrandizing and the first half of the movie is a non-stop barrage of ad-libbing set to music. The movie is edited to the music's beat with an excessive amount of speedups and slowdowns which do not do much for the "scary" tone. The cast of teenagers get mowed down in mostly unrelated ways. One could easily edit out some of these characters from the final cut without impacting the story, which is not a good sign.
The ultimate conclusion is also nonsensical, and puts into question many of the events and character motivations. If I had to guess what the tone is supposed to be, it could charitably be interpreted as an Eli Roth-style genre send-off. I think this is going to be a Halloween staple for my friends and I going forward. If you enjoy terrible horror movies -or brilliant comedies- give this a try, the 90 minute running time just flew by.
