By Simon Thompson
Director/co-writer Illya Konstantin’s Night Of Violence is a meandering, dull, and predictable slasher movie that limps to its finish harder than a prime Wladimir Klitschko scraping together a decision victory. This is a movie so dull that it barely establishes any atmosphere whatsoever, which is, above all else, the key ingredient to any good horror movie.
The plot takes place during an office party for a pharmaceutical company that is about as morally scrupulous as the Umbrella Corporation. The company in question is celebrating a significant legal victory against a small town who sued them for the damaging effects that its product ( a drug called Azlepta) had done to their lives. As the celebration rolls on, a group of masked individuals break into the company’s headquarters and start working through the party guests one by one, leaving a small band of survivors trapped inside the building who must work together to survive while they hatch an exit plan.
The biggest issue that this movie suffers from has to be characterisation. The band of survivors are a series of Guess Who card cliches from Elliot (Kit Lang) the meek nerd forced to step up in a crisis, to Blake (Russ Russo) a bargain bin Stiffler, and Janelle ( Abria Jackson), who occupies the spot of being the sensible one. Both Janelle and Elliot are so bland you don’t particularly care whether they survive or not, and Blake is so unlikeable that you’re actively rooting for the masked band to dismember him immediately.
The cinematography is flat and stiff, we barely get any unconventional camera angles during the various chase sequences, with the camera just staying upright more often than not. The colour palette manages to be somehow both a generic series of greys and office lighting blue, mixed with multiple key scenes being shot in pitch darkness to the extent that it becomes a Sisyphean task in itself trying to see what is going on.
The only decent thing about Night Of Violence is the music. Chris Dudley and Marco Antonio Flores Godoy’s score has a nice 80s synth quality to it, but is let down by the rest of the movie’s overall shortcomings and complete lack of atmosphere.
In short, Night Of Violence is a fast food generic slasher that is watched and then forgotten about moments later. The script by Konstantin and co-writer Christopher Lang plays it as safe and predictable as possible all the way until the end credits, ultimately to the movie’s detriment.
Night of Violence screened as part of Frightfest 2025.
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