‘HELL FEST’ Review

Hell Fest feels like the fake horror movie that characters in a horror movie watch when they go to the theater – and that’s actually a compliment. The cliches somehow add to the charm whereas in any other horror movie I’d be rolling my eyes about it. Have you ever gone to a theme park around Halloween, whether it be Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights, or Six Flags’ Fright Fest, and wondered – if someone were to be killed here, would you really be able to tell, or distinguish it from the act?

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That’s the basic premise of Gregory Plotkin’s Hell Fest’, as a group of friends attend the horror theme park and slowly get picked off one by one by a masked killer simply referred to in the end credits as “The Other”. The killer is a pretty generic slasher who kind of works just as an excuse to get the characters into the unique haunted house set pieces.Think ‘Escape From Tomorrow’, where the filmmakers sneaked into Disney World to make a horror movie, and apply that to the concept of sneaking into a haunted attraction and making a movie in it. Sure, it’s all made for the movie in this case – but you’ll be fooled into thinking this could be a real place

Gregory Plotkin helms his second directorial effort (after having directed Paranormal Activity: Ghost Dimension and having edited Get Out and Happy Death Day). Though the direction isn’t necessarily anything to write home about, Plotkin uses his editorial experiences to good measure as we’re taken on this wild ride from haunted house to haunted house in what at times feels like a video collage of haunted attractions.

While Hell Fest doesn’t break any new ground, it’s the perfect fall kick-off movie for Halloween season (something I was hoping The Nun would be, but I digress). For the most part, it is pretty by the numbers. You know when someone is going to be killed, you know when the scares are coming, and it is quite cornball at times – and yet somehow, I didn’t mind, because in Hell Fest it’s as equally cheesy as it is charming. The introductory dialogue when we first meet the girls is so typically raunchy and on the nose, you have to chuckle. Natalie (played by Amy Forsyth) is invited to go along with three friends – and a crush – to attend a local Halloween attraction, the titular ‘Hell Fest’, a haunted attraction that basically feels like a more extreme version of Fright Fest at Six Flags. With VIP wristbands to skip the lines, Natalie and her friends venture through the park with the intent of making it to The Dead Lands – an area of the park where the actors are actually allowed to touch you. Along the way, The Other stalks his prey and arrives unannounced in one of the haunted houses, tricking the friends into thinking he is one of the actors, as he is about to murder a young woman. Natalie tells him to just do it already, egging him on, and he stabs away, Natalie watching, unable to distinguish whether what she is seeing is real or not. Because fun and thrill of figuring out which of these haunt actors is really the killer is what makes ‘Hell Fest’, to me, what I thought Rob Zombie’s 31 should have been.

Like many others were, I was delighted to see Tony Todd in a wide release horror film but would have liked to see him have a little more screen time. The scene he’s in is great but he really leaves you wanting more. The scares are light, the kills aren’t particularly fresh or interesting but you can’t help but have fun with the characters and imagining you’re with them on this fun Halloween night out as you journey from Haunted House to haunted house and laughing together at the cheap “gotcha!” Scares. You can tell the cast and crew had a lot of fun making Hell Fest and it’s contagious. There were times that while I was laughing at the cheesiness of it all I couldn’t help but smile and feel like I was with them on the frightful adventure.

Sometimes the trashy slasher is the best way to kick off the Halloween season at the movies and this is the perfect start to the season for me as it gave me the warm and fuzzies that I needed. If you’re not in the mood to go out and experience a haunted attraction this October, going to see Hell Fest might be your next best option. After all, it’s cheaper – and you might have just as much fun.