By Simon Thompson
Writer/director Ama Lee’s Slashercise is a movie that I wanted to like far more than I actually ended up doing. It’s a comedy-horror with a great idea for a central premise, but which falls flat due to pacing issues and repetition.
The plot of the movie follows a group of gym goers as they fight for their survival against a masked serial killer known as Meat Head (Lee Valak). The plot is both a three act structured narrative and a fitness video at the same time, with the action flitting back and forth between the two.
Visually the film is draped in 1980s iconography, from the outfits to the extensive neon, which, when coupled with the carefully chosen cheesy synth music, does a good job of recapturing the popular image that people have of that decade whether they lived through it or not. The issue that I have though, is that because Lee is shooting the movie on digital it comes across as too polished and clean, compared to the grainy look that most non high-end 1980s cameras actually had.
Lee Valak is clearly enjoying himself as Meat Head and the rest of the cast are well chosen in their respective roles, largely because they all fit the bill of what your average American looks like according to Capcom and SNK game designers.
Unfortunately after the initial novelty of the 1980s aesthetic wears off, the humour becomes repetitive and stale. Because the movie is under an hour long, the same 3-4 jokes are recycled constantly at the expense of character development and pacing which renders the dramatic scenes of the movie inconsequential because you haven’t spent enough time with these characters to feel any sort of emotion whatsoever once they’ve been gruesomely bumped off.
When you compare Slashercise to my favourite of the genre 1980s horror-sci fi satire Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place, which, while adopting the aesthetics and cliches of the decade it’s mocking, actually develops the characters and jokes just a collection wasn’t -a – lot -of -1980s – tv- ridiculous gags, you realise there is a Grand Canyon sized quality gap with Lee’s satire.
At fifty eight minutes long, if you’re curious to check out Slashercise for any reason, its not going to eat up too much of your time – but after the script’s one joke wears off, sticking around to see the rest is as productive an endeavour as trying to rearranging the sandwich cart on the Costa Concordia.
Bloody Flicks 