I’m not usually one to be swayed by the cover of a DVD, especially a low-budget horror DVD, but The Slaughter had me intrigued. The front cover boasts numerous plaudits: Best Splatter Horror Award at the Phoenix International Horror & Sci Fi Film Festival, Best Horror at the Rhode Island International Horror Film Fest, and Best Chill! at the Horror and Thriller Film Festival, and it was also nominated for Best Feature at the 2007 Chicago Horror Festival. Now I have no idea how prestigious these various film festivals are but clearly they must have been watching a different film than I did, as this is one bad movie.
The Slaughter is filled with some of the weakest special effects I’ve seen in some time, bad acting, and a ridiculous script. The film opens as a group of female cultists are performing a ritual in the woods, chanting some Cthulhu-inspired babble. They raise a she-demon from hell, which is nothing more than an actor superimposed in the woods to make it look like she’s rising out of the ground. What is this, 1960? The demon apparently inhabits one of the cultists (no mention is made of what happened to the rest) and she takes up residence in an old house. Cut ahead forty years to the present day as a group of friends is hired by a real estate agent to clean up the house so it can be sold.
This group is made up out of stereotype, two-dimensional characters…Travis is the macho, sex-crazed musclehead, Heather is his bimbo girlfriend; Razz is the resident stoner; Iggy is the intelligent nerd, Terry is the rational boss of the group; and Dana is the usual horror film heroine. You know right from the start that she’s probably destined to survive. The real estate agent, Mr. Woods is the arrogant, rich bully who has brought along his brown-nosing assistant Alexandra. Now they are supposed to be there to clean the house up but I think we see about fifteen seconds of work actually performed.
The performances are not horrible but the scripting is just laughable. The find an old book made of skin hidden in the cellar and Iggy soon figures out at this she-demon needs to complete several ritual sacrifices in order to become flesh and take over the world…I guess. It tries to be Lovecraft-inspired with stories about ancient demons and such. The film desperately wants to be another "Evil Dead" but director Jay Lee is NOT Sam Raimi. The various lambs are led to The Slaughter (pun intended) one by one as they encounter the wicked and naked she-demon. Some of the kills are well done, particularly when one of the group gets sucked up into a chimney and has various rocks get sucked up, flaying the skin from his face. But the awful super-imposing is back when another is burned alive. I saw better looking effects on Saturday morning TV shows in the 70’s.
In the last twenty minutes or so the film changes from fairly straightforward horror to a tongue-in-cheek spoof as the remaining survivors have to battle their friends who have come back to life as zombies. At one point they bicker over if the zombies are the George Romero shambling type or the virus-infected speedy type. Ha ha…The film is shot fairly well. Sound and lighting and most of the technical aspects are good. The make-up effects are also decent. There are just no scares, and the uneven pace of the film, switching from horror to comedy-horror was clumsily handled. The few extras included one deleted scene and a gag/outtake reel. If this film won these numerous awards, I would have hated to see the competition.
