In a not-entirely unrelated item of note, they cast a group of actors in their late 20’s (Amanda Detmer who played Terry was almost 30) to play these high school seniors. There is a distinct funk of over dramatic acting looming over this entire film. Not really a whole lot of other ways to describe it. There was a very particular school of acting in the late 90’s and early 00’s that was, well, bad. So when do you recommend it? When a friend asks for a slightly ironic late-nineties time capsule that isn’t funny, but also isn’t particularly scary? I don’t know about ya’ll but that situation doesn’t present itself to me too frequently.Īnother item that the other two guys really harped on during our podcast is the acting. It’s not an outright horror comedy, and it’s certainly not a serious horror movie.
Although I love the movie for what it is, the tone of it can make it a hard sell for some people. Not to sound repetitive, but there is an air of silliness to this movie that diminishes it as far as an actual horror experience goes.
In fact, most of the time you’re rooting for the reaper to do his worst, and that is exactly what this movie needs in order to succeed. The film’s tongue-in-cheekness allows you to separate yourself enough from the characters that you’re not particularly disappointed when any of them die in terrible and gruesome ways. Lewton’s death? She get’s overkilled for basically no reason, but it’s more of a spectacle than an Eli Roth-esque torture scene. Lastly, there is an air of silliness to the movie that allows it to do some things that would otherwise be in poor taste. It also ties in well to the running theme that you don’t know when death will come for you. In other deaths, like Billy’s or Terry’s, they’re killed out of nowhere with virtually no lead up.
Lewton, the movie focuses in on items that could easily be used by the grim reaper. The script treats each death as a sort of joke, and switches up the delivery for each one in a way that keeps the viewer in suspense. The film as a whole doesn’t ever really falter much (maybe the funeral scene is a bit long), but the real shining endorsement here is how the deaths work. That first point dovetails nicely into another item that this movie does well: its pacing.