Killer Holiday
Like clowns and scarecrows, there just aren't really a whole lot of good amusement park horror movies. Not sure why. You'd think they'd be a bunch of them by now. At any rate, I guess the likes of Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse and Dark Ride (part of After Dark Horrorfest's 8 films to die for 2006) come immediately to mind. Killer Holiday (2013) is a very typical slasher film that doesn't function as an outlier in the slightest. I never felt as I was watching it that those involved weren't totally sold out to the formula as it is. Kids not far from high school commit to the gnarly road trip certain to feature booze and possible sex. Life's a party and this trip was a means for those riding in the RV for a summer to remember...however, of course, things don't go according to plan. While cruising Route 66, the gang finds a fallen sign pointing towards an old amusement park and decide to see what it is all about...big mistake, obviously.
Before even leaving, the kids are at the home of Rachel Lara, fresh out of rehab. Upstairs, unbeknownst to them, a hunky psychopath is butchering her parents with a kitchen knife. He will follow behind them in a cherry red convertible, stopping off in a desert town (right after they do) to pick up a cowboy hat. He'll meet them, as you might have guessed it, at the amusement park.
Rachel Lara stood out with the best impression, Vibrant red hair and a flaming sensuality to match, Lara is very attune to her body and presence...it is hard to take your eyes away from her. There's a funny scene where one of the guys, cuckolded by his uneasy lack of confidence and awkward inability to read the tea leaves of a flirt, has Lara in the RV while the others search for three of their gang had been grappling with the killer. Lara shamelessly flaunts her figure in a pull-down shirt after coyly taunting his desire to look at her when she walked to the back room to change. In a separate event, around a camp fire, she performed a little dance for the company, settling on the lap of David Namminga. The token "nerd" of the group (one of only three girls, among a chorus of dudes), is Julia Beth Stern. Stern has a certain fondness for Namminga, so Lara choosing him was almost strategic in how feminine wiles drive the engine of male attention.
I was rather disappointed in the lack of atmosphere for the amusement park.Most of the movie, when at the park, is just too dark. Even worse is that the park doesn't get much definition during the late afternoon. The violence is very familiar: the weapons of the trade you normally see are in the killer's toolbox. The kitchen knife is his favorite. There's a clever rigged guitar with a sharp, pointy handle trap that emerges after a victim believes he's survived an electrocution. An accidental arm decapitation (and not so accidental beheading) leaves the victim emasculating the killer! A knife surprises another victim in the eye while the killer takes great time impaling another with a broken bottle (here, he stabs her, allows her to suffer before finally ending her after telling her "to breathe"). And so on.
There's even a visit to the killer's pop who tried to warn the kids away and is held in contempt for do so. He's forced to hold the knife as the killer drives a victim's head into it. Par for the course. Michael Copon summons his inner Fred Krueger. He mocks his victims, taking great pleasure in being the final face they see before the fade to black. Lara's parents' execution at the beginning immediately presents the kind of killer you'll see throughout. Being a slasher, there's a twist (which isn't much of a twist considering slasher fans have grown to read the signs from countless others before Killer Holiday) involving family revelations that ties the killer to a member of the RV gang. And another twist involving the killer in a whole different way to a member of the RV gang. The fact that the killer was so intimately involved with murdering the parents should be a clue. The relative twist is noised to us repeatedly.
What the director does with slow motion, B&W photography featuring moments in scenes we have previously seen, and ADD editing all interfere with the pacing of the plot and just rather feel desperate in begging us to recognize an attempt at filmmaking style. But they really don't add anything of value to characters that do little to distinguish themselves. Few are colorful enough (well, just one or two, really) to leave their mark on us. Meat for the grinder, really.
Before even leaving, the kids are at the home of Rachel Lara, fresh out of rehab. Upstairs, unbeknownst to them, a hunky psychopath is butchering her parents with a kitchen knife. He will follow behind them in a cherry red convertible, stopping off in a desert town (right after they do) to pick up a cowboy hat. He'll meet them, as you might have guessed it, at the amusement park.
Rachel Lara stood out with the best impression, Vibrant red hair and a flaming sensuality to match, Lara is very attune to her body and presence...it is hard to take your eyes away from her. There's a funny scene where one of the guys, cuckolded by his uneasy lack of confidence and awkward inability to read the tea leaves of a flirt, has Lara in the RV while the others search for three of their gang had been grappling with the killer. Lara shamelessly flaunts her figure in a pull-down shirt after coyly taunting his desire to look at her when she walked to the back room to change. In a separate event, around a camp fire, she performed a little dance for the company, settling on the lap of David Namminga. The token "nerd" of the group (one of only three girls, among a chorus of dudes), is Julia Beth Stern. Stern has a certain fondness for Namminga, so Lara choosing him was almost strategic in how feminine wiles drive the engine of male attention.
I was rather disappointed in the lack of atmosphere for the amusement park.Most of the movie, when at the park, is just too dark. Even worse is that the park doesn't get much definition during the late afternoon. The violence is very familiar: the weapons of the trade you normally see are in the killer's toolbox. The kitchen knife is his favorite. There's a clever rigged guitar with a sharp, pointy handle trap that emerges after a victim believes he's survived an electrocution. An accidental arm decapitation (and not so accidental beheading) leaves the victim emasculating the killer! A knife surprises another victim in the eye while the killer takes great time impaling another with a broken bottle (here, he stabs her, allows her to suffer before finally ending her after telling her "to breathe"). And so on.
There's even a visit to the killer's pop who tried to warn the kids away and is held in contempt for do so. He's forced to hold the knife as the killer drives a victim's head into it. Par for the course. Michael Copon summons his inner Fred Krueger. He mocks his victims, taking great pleasure in being the final face they see before the fade to black. Lara's parents' execution at the beginning immediately presents the kind of killer you'll see throughout. Being a slasher, there's a twist (which isn't much of a twist considering slasher fans have grown to read the signs from countless others before Killer Holiday) involving family revelations that ties the killer to a member of the RV gang. And another twist involving the killer in a whole different way to a member of the RV gang. The fact that the killer was so intimately involved with murdering the parents should be a clue. The relative twist is noised to us repeatedly.
What the director does with slow motion, B&W photography featuring moments in scenes we have previously seen, and ADD editing all interfere with the pacing of the plot and just rather feel desperate in begging us to recognize an attempt at filmmaking style. But they really don't add anything of value to characters that do little to distinguish themselves. Few are colorful enough (well, just one or two, really) to leave their mark on us. Meat for the grinder, really.
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