Unstoppable Trickery (Trick, 2019)

Trick_PosterOne Halloween at a party of the local high schoolers, one student suddenly shocks everyone by slaughtering almost everyone at the party.  The student, nicknamed Trick, is wounded and while in the hospital breaks free, after taking several bullets and falling out a window, he disappears.

While everyone else is sure he is dead, believing he had leaped into the nearby river, Det. Mike Denver is not so convinced.  He believes that Trick is still out there.

The following Halloween, he is proven right as Trick starts appearing in different masks, wearing creepy face makeup beneath. Like Jason or Michael, Trick seems capable of surviving multiple wounds and appearing anywhere at any time.

So, Trick is the latest from Patrick Lussier (Drive Angry, My Bloody Valentine) and screenwriting collaborator Todd Farmer (Drive Angry, My Bloody Valentine and Jason X) have created a fairly by the books action slasher.  This is not bad, as they show they have a pretty solid grasp on the tropes and find a way to explain them in a late film twist. The film is fairly tense with some thrills.

The cast is quite good, led by Omar Epps.  But he is supported by genre vets like Tom Atkins and Jamie Kennedy. And the faces I was less familiar with, such as Kristina Reyes and Ellen Adair were good as well.

As noted, the film is not breaking new ground, but it is a pretty fun and exciting slasher film over all.

Lets Go Camping Part 10 (Jason X, 2001)

jasonxPretty much ignoring Jason Goes to Hell, Jim Isaac (director) and Todd Farmer (writer) give us Jason’s first (and to date only) trip to space.  Eat your heart out Neil Armstrong.

Granted, both the Leprechaun and Pinhead (from the Hellraiser films) had already gone into space about five years before, so it is not a wholly original idea.

The film begins with a top secret military base below Camp Crystal Lake (!) where Jason is being held until he can be transported by movie director David Cronenberg (!) and a bunch of military guys.  This goes badly, and Jason ends up trapped in cryogenic sleep along with a young woman named Rowan (Lexa Doig) who was trying to prevent his escape.

Decades later they are found by students on a field trip to a now barren earth.  The students bring them back to their ship and their teacher thinks he can get a lot of money for Jason.  They revive Rowan, then Jason wakes up and mayhem ensues.

The film has middling effects, the practical stuff looks good, but the digital looks very, well, digital.  The story is out there and includes all sorts of odd things like a girl android in love with her creator, Jason getting a chrome makeover, killing holographic campers, soldiers hanging out on the spaceship, terrible “Future Clothing Fashion”…there is a ridiculously high body count in this film.  It is full of stock characters (the stoner, the smart kid, the jock, the greedy guy, etc) who never amount to much.

This film never worries about explaining why Jason is not in hell.  It never worries about explaining much, actually.  Needless to say, this helped the studio push forward with a Freddy and Jason movie to wash the taste of this one out of fans mouths.

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