Party Hard Die Young

A fun vacation for a group of teenage friends to an island resort in Croatia turns into a nightmare when they are targeted by a masked murderer who refuses to forget what they did last summer in director Dominick Hartl's meta-slasher, a throwback to Wes Craven's Scream and the glut of self aware horror movies that followed in its wake. This movie offers a fresh spin on things, incorporating modern trappings such as social media and apps into the plot which will appeal to today's tech savvy teens, and was filmed on location during a huge annual EDM festival for high school seniors throughout Europe. Thomas W. Kiennast's paradise nightclub cinematography also gives it glossy look that makes the movie feel like an American movie rather than a European one.

Shudder's latest entry is a lackluster mix of 90s slasher cliches. Although it has some good ideas as well as some creepy moments. It's a little dragged out with one note characters and performances. In fact the best thing about it is the stylish way it's shot. It's plot is simple as a group of friends do something naughty and pay for it a year later. I wish I could say something solid about it but its just not great, it is however not awful just overly mediocre.

5/10

Credit to American video streaming services for picking up foreign movies, but this was a fairly unremarkable one - a by-the-numbers slasher. Characters were mostly indistinguishable. Motive was a common one for the subgenre. Police and security presence for a huge party seemed unrealistically small, particularly with one death after another. Some credit for the deaths, but when that's the main thing a horror movie has in its favor, that's disappointing.

Hundreds of European teens spend summer break partying on a small Croatian island, including a group of friends and classmates from am Austrian school, who are hunted down by a mysterious killer. Since the invention of cellphones you have to be quite creative to make a slasher film. This is where I have a problem with this movie, there were a few instances when the victims could have easily called or texted for help yet the reason for not doing so were quite lame . The movie was also a bit too talky. Yet, I think it was not that bad as there are dozens of horrible modern slashers out there, this one was engaging, with creative kills and not too bad acting!

This is an average teen slasher flick. Nothing more. Have the folks giving it such high marks never seen one of these done right before? Nothing original, nothing special. It's ok, that's it.