★ 2 / 10
Terrible!
honeygrrl1978
Just a slasher and a really bad one, at that. Not scary, no nuance, nothing psychological, just dumb. I mean, how can several military-trained shooters with…
Just a slasher and a really bad one, at that. Not scary, no nuance, nothing psychological, just dumb. I mean, how can several military-trained shooters with high-powered rifles not hit the metal guy in the spots where he wasn't covered with the metal??
I gave it a 2 instead of a 1 because the rich kids were annoying and they got what they deserved (in movieland, I don't condone killing IRL!).
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★ 4 / 10
The California Cruiseship Massacre
Aylmer
Several dimwitted spring breakers foolishly decide to save money on a trip down the coast by finding passage on a derelict cruise ship that apparently has no…
Several dimwitted spring breakers foolishly decide to save money on a trip down the coast by finding passage on a derelict cruise ship that apparently has no crew. While this film has an astonishing preponderance of pretty girls and a couple decent horror kills, it can't quite decide what it wants to be. It doesn't quite have the acting chops and snappy writing to successfully be a witty condemnation of classism (as much of the dialog gets mired in), and it doesn't have enough graphic nudity, violence, thrills or laughs to be much of a fun exploitation movie.
It doesn't help that this film has such rudimentary character development. Oh, this airhead gal is a nymphomaniac and doesn't care about her boyfriend, I wonder what comes from that? Next scene: Dead. This girl is a loud mouth with a violent streak? Next scene: Dead. These two frat bro's (including one who looks astonishingly like a young Buster Crabbe) turn out to be inventors of a dating app for rich peop-... dead. Up until 2 minutes prior to their deaths, they just come off as addle-brained hedonists in search of alcohol, making us not really miss any of them. Even the "final girl" gets very little to do and doesn't end up coming off relatable before getting killed off without accomplishing anything of note.
The evil family run by a "Bloody Ma" Barker style Matriarch doesn't really exude a lot of creepiness outside of the seemingly straight arrow son with anger issues. He seems to get violently triggered by any woman showing him affection but otherwise we really don't get a sense of what he wants. It felt like a scene was missing with him and his mother having some sort of Oedipal interaction to cement how he's stuck in the role of having to please his mother at all costs and that any other women in his life are a threat to him. The other members like the pervert brother, the leatherface mute, and the gibbering dad suffer from not being developed enough and not being acted convincingly enough.
Things get derailed 2/3 of the way through the movie with the arrival of a coast guard vessel, which turns this movie into an action movie and asks us to switch focus to a whole new set of undeveloped characters. If feels like this film takes a lot of easy routes toward cheap thrill when it would have been far more interesting to see some twists come into play (like the family try and use the kids' app to find more victims, to have the family play the kids off one another more and get them to fight each other, to tie in the coast guard guys better beforehand, or even to introduce a few more characters, like another group of bamboozled tourists or some crew members onboard to give the ship a little more life).
The low budget also shows by omitting any establishing shots of any ships at sea or anyone at the controls, making us believe that the entire film was shot on a stationary disused ship in need of repair. Granted, it's a neat location that gets used to its potential, but without the production design to clean it up a little or the budget to hire some crew, it just makes the group of kids seem unbelievably idiotic to board it in the first place. It's hard to connect with or care about idiotic characters, so in such a situation you may as well have more fun with them before killing them off.
That said, the film looks pretty good for the most part with atmospheric horror lighting, boasts a pretty solid musical score, and gets a couple extra stars for the eye candy cast and the unique location.
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80%
AUDIENCE
3.2/10
256
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PLS DO ADD HERE THE VENOM 2, CAN'T WAIT FOR THAT MOVIE TO DOWNLOAD! ;(