Beach Massacre at Kill Devil Hill kind of surprised me, but not necessarily in a good way. From the attention grabbing cover of a young woman in a bikini, with a knife, body, and blood, one would think this has all the classic markings of being a B level slasher flick. While it by all means is B level, it is actually less your typical teen slasher flick, and tries to take things in a more story driven direction. Unfortunately, the budget and talent just wasn't here to successfully pull off what they tried to do.
1- The cuts, transitions, and in general the editing is awful, even by B movie standards. Jarring and distracting camera cuts all through the movie, awkward dialogue with possibly some mistakes that weren't edited out correctly, loud music that doesn't cut out at the right time and drowns out the first part of dialogue scenes. Some of this stuff may have been design decisions rather than all being mistakes, but it all came off as distracting and almost unfinished.
2- the acting, while not "good", also wasn't terrible for your average indi film. Some dialogue scenes tended to draw out longer than needed and the writing was hit and miss, but I've seen worse.
3- The story tried to be something more than your typical indi horror slasher, but it just didn't all gel together very well, and came off as long winded. This movie was certainly a slow burner with a majority of the film time spent introducing characters, the plot situation and multiple different threads. While somewhat unique, it just wasn't very interesting, and while there is a twist in how the movie ends, it leaves you more thinking "ok....?" than being surprised or entertained by it.
IMO, anyone looking for some slasher movie fun will likely be disappointed, and people who are wanting a dark story will want something with more quality and meat to it.
