Pillow Party Massacre

Perhaps the worst ovie of the year.

A bunch of totally unattractive Gez Z'ers get together in a house years after pulling an April Fool's prank on one of the students. Heard it before? Of course you have.

The movie is filled with used up cliches: Jump scares, Truth or Dare games, you name it. Only none of it is effective in this horribly boring movie.

What makes it worse is that the cast cannot act their way out of a proverbially paper bag and they are down right fugly so you don't even want to look at them.

Don't even think about crisp, exciting, directing. Watching paint dry is more exciting.

When a tight knit group of high school kids pull a prank on one of their friends...it causes the target of the prank to snap, and murder the boy who set her up.

Fast forward two years later, and we have this same group reconnecting at a cabin in the woods.

Where they start being hunted by a not-so mysterious killer.

Because, on top the plot being horribly constructed.

What's supposed to be the "twist" at the end...is just way too predictable.

With the bulk of the film being almost entirely irrelevant to the conclusion.

The whole movie is just loathesomely bad, on practically every front.

And is barely able to hold your attention.

The fact that not a whole lot happens in the run-up to the underwhelming finale...just renders the whole thing to be overtly boring.

The pillow fight (seemingly for which the film is named) is inexplicably forced into the story; characters are thrown in, simply for the sake of dying (and upping the kill count); while plot elements are introduced, and just left as loose ends.

Also...if you think about it...the killer could only ever be one of two people.

And they make the one one option so obvious, that you just reject even considering it as being reasonable.

So, by process of elimination, it's really not that hard to sus out who the killer is, pretty much straight from the get-go.

Thus, the whole thing is just way too predictable, in it's blatant (yet failed) attempt to be unpredictable.

Not to mention, the whole thing is poorly written, poorly acted, and poorly constructed.

With no attention to detail.

And a finale so underwhelming, it's almost funny.

But it's not.

And the kills suck.

Rendering the whole thing borderline unwatchable.

It's only redeeming value, whatsoever, is quite literally, it's rad post punk soundtrack.

So do yourself a favour and pass this one by.

It's just not worth the time wasted.

1.5 out of 10.

I enjoy the slasher sub genre more than any other, having been there in the golden age. As a result I'm always looking for new "throwback" additions.

Most fail because they try to do something new or put a fresh twist on things. That's now how it's done. The key is knowing that the "formula" works and following that formula with your own new and unique story.

This young filmmaker did a great job following the formula. The story works and he pieced it together nicely. It is a well done by the book slasher. A nice watch for the OG fans of the sub genre.

Things for this filmmaker to look at to improve in his next foray in the slasher arena:

Likeable characters: Outside of Jax Kellington's "Alana" all of the female characters were unlikeable and the cliche "you wanted them to die" could be said. May have been the script, nay have been the performances. Either way, outside of Alana, the cast didn't work. Kellington could be another Quigley in the making, who knows.

Soundtrack: I will chalk up the lack of atmosphere and tension to a fairly weak soundtrack. Use of ambient sound and synth tracks to brood and build tension would have helped tremendously. Similar to Carpenter's original mistake with Halloween.

Atmosphere: A little less daylight, a bit more dusk and night time. The daytime shots were ok but needed to contain more fun interaction and some light hearted humor tossed in as opposed to the girls bitching and moaning about everything that we got. Also, the killer's "costume" was on point but the 21st century smiley mask can be 86'd. It's too "Scream"(y) and not scary.

To the filmmaker, great job on a throwback slasher. You succeeded where many have failed. Better casting, outside of Kellington, and a more intense, suspenseful soundtrack would go a long way. Keep following the path you're on !

The best thing I could say about Pillow Party Massacre is that the director did in fact pull off making a feature length film which is no easy feat.

There is sincerity and passion behind this project, and two or three of the kills are creative and use some decent makeup effects. This is definitely a step in the right direction for the creator and hopefully a learning experience which will lead to bigger and better projects down the line. But all that being said, I cannot recommend this film as entertainment value on any level.

Despite its tongue-in-cheek title, Pillow Party Massacre never becomes the silly 80's-inspired romp that it keeps on promising to be.

The script is thinner than most direct-to-video horror films would allow their own script to be. Every line of dialogue in this film is soulless exposition, and none of the characters have any personality or identity. By the end of the film I couldn't remember a single character's name, and the few moments where the screenplay tries to be meta are lazy and uncommitted. You can tell that the filmmakers have intended to make their own version of Scream without the wit, knowhow or brilliance that made that film work. And the resulting project is soulless, boring and so glacially paced that the short running time felt phenomenally longer than it actually was.

The film is also riddled with technical flaws. The CGI looks unbelievably cheap and not in an ironic way, and the majority of the kills look incredibly fake without it even being humourous. There are way too many dance sequences in the film which drag on for way too long with the intro scene being the most notable example, and the camera seems to linger on the feet and legs of the characters for an uncomfortably long amount of time as if the director of photography has some kind of strange fetish. The colour grading is terribly off, the sound editing is consistently weak, there are numerous lines of dialogue that are obviously dubbed or sometimes layered multiple times out of order, and the cinematography seems to be using a camera that operates on a steadycam gimble yet also manages to shake all the time. Why you would shake the camera whilst also trying to steady it goes completely beyond me, it's like ordering a diet coke with a side of sugar.

Ultimately, the film is just boring. It was made with the best intentions but without proper expertise or a screenplay worth filming. I didn't laugh, I wasn't scared, I wasn't entertained. This film is no massacre, it's a drag.

Right, well I figured that with a title such as "Pillow Party Massacre" then maybe this 2023 might be a horror spoof on the old classic slasher movies such as "Slumber Party Massacre". In fact, I hadn't even heard about this movie prior to sitting down to watch it, so I wasn't sure what I was in for.

The storyline in "Pillow Party Massacre" was generic, oh so very, very generic. This was essentially just another run-of-the-mill slasher movie with a masked killer wearing a black robe. Maybe writer and director Calvin Morie McCarthy is a hardcore fan of the "Scream" franchise, because "Pillow Party Massacre" felt like a watered down attempt at copying those movies. Except that "Pillow Party Massacre" lacked the brutality, the budget, the intensity and the story.

Needless to say that I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie. However, it should be noted though, that the acting performances weren't all that bad, taking into consideration the severe limitations imposed upon the actresses and actors by an inferior script and wooden character gallery.

Visually then "Pillow Party Massacre" was a mess. The vast majority of the special effects were so bad that they effectively were just that; special! Some of the effects were so bad that I was laughing loudly and had to go back and watch it a second time. But a few of the special effects were actually great, so go figure.

If you enjoy a slasher movie, then do yourself a favor and don't waste 87 minutes on "Pillow Party Massacre". Some of us did so you don't have to. There are far better slasher movies readily available out there in an abundance.

My rating of writer and director Calvin Morie McCarthy's 2023 movie "Pillow Party Massacre" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.