Final Exam

Final Exam is like cafeteria food. Nothing special and a little bland, but it gets the job done. If you're needing an 80's slasher fix, Final Exam isn't the cream of the crop, but it's not without its own high points. Some of the characters are decently developed and the filmmakers create a little bit of mood with the abandoned campus location. It's just a shame that the film's killer is such a blank slate.

the first 5 minutes of the film are great, but then there is no action for the next hour. a psycho going around killing college kids, no motive what so ever wich i think is cool cause it's more scary like that. the one thing the movie tried to do is character developement. not that it's a bad thing to do, but they did overkill in it. the other problem is there were too many kills mixed in, too much too fast, though not a bad slasher at all, it's just that the first hour is kind of a waste but if you're a true horror fan like me you will see the greatness in the movie. i give it 6/10. decent suspense and maybe a few scares.

The opening of final exam seems pretty promising, a couple making out in a car are stabbed to death by a killer, Now the rest is a bore. The killer shows up at a college campus stalking students. Why? Who is this man? these are never quite explained. This is slow paced, even for a horror movie. Check out happy birthday to me. Or madman. they are much better.

Nobody but Hitchcock fans watch thrillers for the art. Everyone else is looking for actual thrills. The slasher cycle began with Halloween, and John Carpenter provided the blueprint for the imitations that followed - suspense, jump scares, false frights that turn out to be nothing, doom-laden musical notes... The mechanics of the low-budget thriller are familiar and easily achieved.

Final Exam borrows a few tried and true items from Halloween's box of tools. The killer is shot from the waist down or partially screened by trees to appear remote and menacing. Bright light glints off a bloody blade on an otherwise dark night. But the little here fails to actually generate suspense. The viewer is merely reminded that suspense-building is a necessary element of the process. The problem is that the building blocks of a slasher film are too thinly spread and separated by long stretches of time spent among poorly drawn and uninteresting characters. This is a common fault in slasher movies but one which can be at least partially offset by lively pacing and occasional action. Unfortunately, the film's pace is leaden and what little action occurs is so poorly staged that it fails to excite a viewer perpetually starved for distraction.

This is Final Exam's fatal fault. Nobody renting a slasher movie is expecting character interest on the level of The Big Chill or the epic sweep of The Godfather. The viewer's expectations are already modest. But providing more stimulation than what is minimally required to keep the viewer awake should not represent undue hardship for a slasher movie's creator.

No thriller worth the name should be this boring. Cinematic entertainment needs to be entertaining. Writer-director Jimmy Huston clearly slept through the lesson in film school that emphasized keeping things moving along.

Final Exam is your average 80's slasher. It has some cool college pranks and all that tomfoolery that takes place at college campuses around the world(except Union). But this movie drowns in its own character development. It takes WAY too much time with its characters and totally forgets its a slasher flick. And the slashings aren't very good. I want gore with my slash! 6/10.