Best Slasher Movies

Australian horror is making a resurgence and Acolytes is at the head of the pack. There is nothing I didn’t like about this movie. It also serves as a prime example of why it’s so important to ignore IMDB reviews and discover a movie for yourself. I’ll leave my opinions on IMDB critics for another day, but basically, the negative reviews for Acolytes almost made me skip it, and that would’ve been a shame.

Acolytes starts out as a revenge tale – two boys are raped by a local bully and blackmail a serial killer to carry out their vendetta. It backfires on them and soon they find themselves battling for their own lives.

The suspense in Acolytes is intense and the jump scares are effective. The performances from the entire cast is above-par and although the movie is light on the gore, it doesn’t need it to be frightening. Very well done.

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Some people might be a little confused about the name of this movie, so I decided to put it under what typically appears on the DVD cover which is Red Mist. Apparently the name was changed to Freakdog (what the killer, Kenneth, is called by most of the characters throughout the film) because Red Mist was giving too many people the impression it was a sniper movie. I’m not entirely sure. In any event, whatever you call it, it was a pretty damn good movie.

The plot starts out very familiar – group of pretty young people tease a creepy loner and trick him into thinking they’re friends only to have it go horribly awry for everyone involved – but veers off in a new direction when the somewhat supernatural comes in to play.

Kenneth is comatose after the meanies give him drugs which he reacts badly to. One of the meanies has a heart and feels bad for him. She tries to save his life by giving him an experimental injection. This is where the supernatural element comes into play.

Excellent little film and definitely worth a watch. The open ending really allows you to draw your own conclusions as to what the conclusion really is and doesn’t insult the viewer’s intelligence by trying to wrap everything up.

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Its hard to make someone feel for a drunken hit and run driver, but somehow Hit and Run does. I give the credit for that to Laura Breckinridge (Amusement) who gives an excellent performance as Mary Murdock – our drunken hit and runner. Turning in an equally impressive performance as Timothy Emser, the man that goes from being the victim of the hit and run to the sadistic stalker bent on revenge, is the delightfully creepy Kevin Corrigan (Superbad).

Hit and Run’s greatest strength is in its cast and the way it makes you wonder what you would do if you found yourself in Mary Murdock’s position. This is a movie that stays with you which isn’t a bad thing at all.

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