Final Stab

A rich bitch (Erinn Carter) throws a Halloween birthday party for her sister (Melissa Renee Martin) at a secluded house where a family was murdered years earlier. Unbeknownst to the innocent sister and her mentally unstable boyfriend (Jamie Gannon), they're actually being set up as guinea pigs for a plan to turn the house into a bed and breakfast where make-believe murder mystery games are to be played. Who better to show up than a real masked killer with a knife?

Martin and (especially) Chris Boyd are better actors than usual for a David DeCoteau movie, but this is basically just a bunch of long, boring, talky sequences punctuated by kill scenes so tame John Ashcroft wouldn't even raise an eyebrow at them. A few ridiculous surprises pop up near the end, but they do not make up for the tediousness of the first hour.

Score: 2 out of 10

A wealthy group of recent college grads are invited to participate in a "murder mystery" game. It begins as a fun evening of scary stunts featuring rubber knives, fake blood, and a "murderer" played by an actor in a creepy mask. But when the body count becomes real, the players soon realize that one of them is a real killer and the rest of them are playing an altogether different game...to stay alive.

Final Stab is a pretty decent horror flick made in 2001. The acting by the main characters is pretty good for a B movie. There is a little bit of blood and no nudity. Overall I would recommend this to any slasher fan I guess. Don't expect this to be very scary cause it's not one of those "on the edge of your seat" horror movies. About half way through I was able to figure out who the killer was. It's a watchable thriller with minimum gore.

5/10

I know David DeCoteau films will never be mistaken as great art. But if they were at least entertaining then their lack of artistic merit wouldn't be so bad but alas, his films are rarely entertaining, which makes these producers products even more tedious to watch. And FINAL STAB is one tedious film: a bland film with a bland title with bland actors in a bland one-setting story. A game of Pong is more compelling than this so-called horror film.

The funny thing about this film is that it was shot in widescreen and yet the film was never released theatrically. So why bother shooting this direct-to-home video film in widescreen?

Anyway, there's almost nothing else worth mentioning about FINAL STAB. It's pretty difficult to write a concise critique for such a bland film.

Final Scream commits the cardinal sin of having people endlessly stalking around a house, shouting in the dark and looking for people. If I've got one pet hate, it's wasting time having people walk around shouting. The worst example of this to me is Legend of the Mummy 2, and while watching Final Scream I noticed that both films were directed by the same guy, and set in the same house! That means I've spent three hours of my life watching people wandering around the same house. Truly painful.

Nightmare having Charlie and his girlfriend Angela are invited to a part by Angela's estranged sister Kirsten, seemingly to repairs ties between them, but really just an excuse to trial a murder mystery weekend venture Kirsten planned out. Before you can 'this film is utterly ridiculous' a real masked killer turns up and starts stabbing everyone to death: the actors hired for the murder mystery weekend, Kirsten's friends, some locals that turn up for some reason. But who is the real killer? Is it Charlie, who has a secret past? Or Kirsten, who goes on about how great Friday the 13th is (good move that, constantly referencing a much better film). No one even realises that there's a killer in their midst until the very end (they just comment on how good people are at playing dead).

I'll say this: It's by no means as bad as Legend of the Mummy 2. I'll also say this: It's by no means a good film either. There's a distinct lack of gore (though plenty of kills)and I for one can't stand the smug, self-referential horror flick talk that Scream has foisted on us. If you like people wandering around asking who's there, then this is the film for you. Good luck.

I admit it, I got suckered in. Silly me! The plot actually borrows more from "April Fools Day" (which was one of the better slasher films of its time) than "Scream." A rich bitch invites her estranged sister and her sister's nightmare-plagued boyfriend to a house-warming party, accompanied by her synchophant college friends. She stages a fake death, allegedly to start a murder mystery theme house as a business venture. But (surprise!) someone starts killing off the guests for real. While I never expected anything of quality, I had hoped for something that was enjoyably bad. The people involved in this films seemed to promise such a thing. What amazed me was how boring it was. Everything that is done here has been done before. The cast is good-looking, but they show very little skin. Also, the killings have very little bloodshed, far less than the R rating warrants. It makes me wonder who the target audience was.

There are only a few minor compensations. Errin Hayes gives a pretty good performance as a Joan Collins wannabe, and the other actors are passable. The background music isn't bad, some of the humor works, and the technical aspects are marginally better than in other films of its kind. But it didn't make the film any less boring.