Slashers

'Slashers' is a gloriously unhinged low-budget slasher flick that gleefully skewers reality TV, horror tropes and media voyeurism into a fun blood-soaked satire that's more conceptionally clever than it is technically competent. Directed and written by Maurice Devereaux, this movie stands out as an inventive and entertaining horror film despite its obvious budget limitations, bad acting and lack of overall polish.

The Plot = Six random contestants Megan (Sarah Josyln Crowder), Devon (Tony Curtis Blondell), Michael (Kieran Keller), Rick (Jerry Spiro), Rebecca (Carolina Pia) and Brenda (Sofia de Medeiros) are chosen to take part in a Japanese reality show called '$la$her$' where they have to fight for their lives and survive against three bloodthirsty killers in order to win $12 Million dollars.

Despite being highly rough around the edges, the movie manages to be a fun ride thanks to its great simple concept in which the director just has fun by running with it through a series of brightly colored sets with a generous amount of blood and gore for good measure. The movie balances suspense and tension quite effectively through tightly edited scenes that are shot in one continuous take, which is highly ambitious and impressive.

The direction by Maurice Devereaux is solid as he does what he can with the incredibly small budget by keeping the momentum going at a brisk pace and incorporates some cool shots and kinetic camera work that keeps you more than invested throughout. However, what holds this back from being great is the poor acting from the obviously inexperienced cast who each turns in overwrought and painful performances which does tend to take you out of the moment, and it doesn't help that the dialogue that they were given was awful. The writing could have done with a bit more polish and cinematography did look cheap, but if you can get past that then you can have a good time with this.

Overall 'Slashers' is a chaotic and campy slasher flick that reaches the level of so bad it's good in horror cinema and as long as you don't go into this expecting anything high art, then you can have fun with this trashy b-movie.

6 people (Sarah Joslyn Crowder, Kieran Keller, Tony Curtis Blondell and more) have agreed to be a part of a Japanese reality show in which they are locked in a creepy house and stalked and killed by 3 sickos (a wonderful performance by Neil Napier and an alright job by Christopher Piggins). Whoever gets out alive wins millions and millions of dollars. But who will get out alive? Maurice Devereaux does a much better job at writing than directing. The script is surprisingly original and smart.

The film is filled with bad actors. However, there are a few gems in here: Kieran Keller, who has done nothing and has nothing planned was actually pretty good IMO, and Tony Curtis Blondell is up and rising. But the best, IMO, was Neil Napier, who played 2 killers very well.

Out of all the "Reality Show" horrors, this is one of the better ones, along side with "My Little Eye" and Kolobos.

What I admire most about this movie is its sheer audacity to be so openly, shamelessly, and unapologetically terrible.

It doesn't even pretend to aim for quality. Almost mocking you for expecting anything decent, and it'd probably roast you if you suggested it made any real effort at all.

Either dive into the dumpster fire and soak in its complete lack of quality, or pick literally any other movie on your list to escape the relentless trainwreck that is Slashers.

And if that's not enough, on top of the awful writing, acting, editing, and directing, it serves up a nice cesspool of juvenile sexism. So yeah, it has that working against it, too.

OK, I'll admit it, I actually loved this film! I couldn't stop watching it, perhaps partly because of how poor the production was, or maybe because of the simplistically wonderful concept.

The acting is TERRIBLE, the direction is out of a third rate Mexican soap opera, the sound, lighting and editing are ridiculously bad and the plot is as thin as the chance anyone other than serious horror fans will like this movie.

I think it is so funny that this is a movie about a Japanese reality TV show set in America, but cast with Canadian actors with accents as thick as Canadian bacon.

Do yourself a favor and watch the film, just don't expect much out of it.

i have to admit, amongst all the overabundance of reality shows and reality rip-offs i.e. Blair Witch Project; Series 7; The ST. Francisville Experiment..i more than expected, i automatically assumed, that $LA$HER$ would be completely a waste of time after reading it's review in Fango. I mean, with lame character names like PREACHER MAN and CHAINSAW CHARLIE, i was sure this was going to be as horrible, if not worse than, THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING. However, i came across a screener and sat down to watch it less than 3 hours ago and was surprisingly impressed. As a whole, the movie isn't the best thing i've ever seen but it had some unexpected charisma (one being the commercial break situations).With the exception of Chainsaw Charlie, who could possibly be a descendant of Jar Jar Binks, the villians or slashers, if you will, were at times over the top but not too annoying. The story played out quite frantically and the actual contestants weren't bad actors at all. Don't get me wrong, i don't see OSCAR knocking on any of their doors for this one, but they were pretty good for a B-movie cast. What i found to be the best part of $LA$HER$ was the fact that it focused on the characters more than the actual hunting. Most B-movies attempt to do this to keep their films from being gorey fluff, but fail because the dialogue is as bad as the frights. This one captured something special though, perhaps it was because there weren't many stereotypical characters. All the blue prints were there to elaborate on, but instead we see these characters for who they are through their stories told in between being hunted. They could have had the "token" personalities but they didn't. The writing could use some touch ups, but for a B-movie it's better than most. Who knows, you may watch this movie and totally hate it. Maybe, ultimately, i'll be the only one that considers $LA$HER$ a few notches above the usual camp. That's fine by me.