That's a Wrap

As a fan of all of Marcel Walz' films to date, and a massive fan of Italian "Giallo" film in particular, I was anxiously looking forward to his newest film, "That's a Wrap", and it definitely did not disappoint! Full of sly in-jokes to the Hollywood behind the scenes process, subtle jabs at current culture, and of course a loving homage to Giallo and Dario Argento films in particular, this film is a real treat! Featuring the always fabulous Sarah French, along with a number of modern indie-horror folks and 90's late-nite stars and even a Tom Savini cameo, along with some clever kills and a cool killer-design, this movie should not be Missed!

If you're a fan of well written, well-acted, and well directed slasher horror films, check out "That's a Wrap." It's a fun film with creative kills and a terrific story about the cast of a slasher horror film stalked by a slasher at a wrap party. Marcel Walz did a wonderful job directing, and Joe Knetter and Robert L. Lucas wrote a phenomenal screenplay with great characters and plenty of gory scares! The cast, led by Sarah French, Cerina Vincent, Monique Parent, and Robert Donavan, is amazing. It's these types of creepy and awesome horror films that make me a horror fan for life! Highly recommended!

At the time of this review, this movie is sitting at a 6.4 user rating. I don't get it. I found it to be really pretentious and clunky. The acting is awful, the effects are trash. I can see the influence that some classic giallo films had on the director, but the execution was poor. There are several scenes of overt, graphic sexuality, that I found to be way too much. Trust me, I'm no prude, but this was WAY over the top and none of it was of any necessity to the story. All in all I was very disappointed with this film. I thought the trailer looked pretty good and I had high hopes. I definitely wouldn't recommend it.

Seems to be a lot of overly positive reviews for this movie early on, i'm guessing it's probably by the cast and crew trying to pad the ratings here. I get what the Director was going for with the lighting, but when every single scene is lit with the same colors, it starts to lose it's effectiveness very quickly. There were a couple decent kills, and there is no shortage of nudity. Those two things alone will more than satisfy a section of the horror fan community, but those looking for a coherent story...need to look elsewhere.

That brings me to the acting. Not terrible, but no real standouts here, maybe Sarah French. Sarah has been at this a long time and seems to be stuck in a rut of ultra low budget movies, that's not necessarily a bad thing...just expected her to break through to more mainstream movies by now.

Overall this is passable for a background movie while you clean the kitchen maybe.

Oh yeah, that open was about 7 or 8 mins too long.

Finally, Marcel Walz makes a decent movie. Is is perfect? God no, but it's better than anything he's done before. The director of the absolutely horrid remake of Blood Feast had made several really lousy direct to video then streaming films and this had the look of yet another. Surprisingly, this turned out to be decent. The acting - for a change is actually alright. No one's winning an award, but nobody really stunk it up either. The script is acceptable, not brilliant but alright. Then there's the direction. Let's be honest, til now Marcel Walz has been Uwe Boll with a breast fetish, but he reigned it in just enough for this to be a watchable and fairly entertaining movie.