By Mark Hockley
Filmed entirely on iPhone (Danny Boyle uses the same technique on the upcoming 28 Years Later) Movie Theatre Massacre is a very low budget would-be horror film. I say would-be because this is really a love letter to the movie theatre experience. There is even a dedication in the end credits commemorating theatres closed during the pandemic.
For the first half an hour or so, focusing on interactions between staff at a movie theatre soon to go out of business, I was happy to go along with the story, making allowances for some clunky editing and encouraged by likeable performances. Linnea Quigley even turns up in a cameo, but doesn’t really add much to the proceedings.
However, things fall apart once a masked murderer turns up and the killings, when they arrive (surely the main selling point of films such as this) are very unconvincing and lacking in any kind of originality.
To be fair, this has been billed as a horror comedy, but sadly there are no thrills and certainly no laughs. The climatic massacre is very poorly staged and if humour was the intent, it fails dismally.
I really don’t want to disparage the efforts of Ian Courtney, who wrote and directed and is clearly passionate about the message that underpins his story. Disappointingly though, apart from having an atmospheric setting and some decent performances, I can’t recommend this.
I’ve seen a lot of low budget horror films in my time (many from the 80s were even worse than this), but it’s not enough to produce something that laments the loss of movie theatres, but forgets that tension and entertainment are what makes that experience worthwhile.
Movie Theater Massacre arrives on VOD from 4 February 2025.
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