For those of you that have endured the misery that is 'Bloody Murder', you know which direction this review is going to take. For those of you that haven't, let me set the scene. This is an early 2000's extremely low budget slasher, featuring a killer that wears a cheep Jason Voorhees mask, a Micheal Myers jumpsuits, whilst wielding a chainsaw similar to that used in 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. Sounds original, right? Oh, and it also takes place at a summer camp called 'Camp Placid Pines'. The acting is painfully uncomfortable to watch and not a single line of dialogue is delivered convincingly throughout. Julie played by Jessica Morris is intended to be our final girl, yet she is so unrelatable and unengaging that if the plot didn't seem so heavily focused on her I would have been none the wiser to her importance over everyone else. The rest of the cast are equally just as poor in their performances and overall line delivery, almost to the point where I began to question whether this was a spoof or not. This film takes place around a very scenic and picturesque place, but given how beautiful the set location is I find it mind-blowing that the director and cinematographer can collectively make something so good look so unintentionally bad on screen. Considering this came out in 2000, it looks as though it was filmed in the late 80's/early 90's. Combining all of this with a score that is just as equally painful as the acting, everything collectively just feels so out of place and awkward. Instead of the score enhancing a scene, I just found it only amplified the poor quality of everything else unfolding on screen. Given how dreadful everything else has been up until this point, I was really hoping that the practical effects and kills were going to be the saving grace of this production. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The kills are very amateur, with the vast majority of them being done off screen and even the ones that we do see I think I would have preferred not to. I just can't understand how so little effort and care can go into something like this, be watched back by the production team and then them all collectively sit back and believe they have achieved something worthy enough of people's time. There is a plot here somewhere, but it is so converluded with overly explained red herrings and diversion tactics as to who the killer is, that by the time the reveal is made, I had no idea who was who and the the over all connection they had to the story. I have no idea why our final girl had any relevance to the killer and I certainly have no idea as to what relevance or involvement he had to the infamous killer 'Trevor Moorehouse'. This is a jumbled mess from start to finish and I have no idea how this film became available to public release. The only reason I have endured this painful viewing is because I grew up owning the sequel "bloody murder 2" (which to my recollection is genuinely a good low budget slasher) on DVD and I really wanted to revisit it and review it for the page. However, for those of you who know me no that I have a thing about reviewing films in sequence, so unfortunately to get to part two I had to suffer part one. I'm really not sure it was worth it, this is by far the worst slasher I have seen to date and really pushed my patience to the limit. I'm amazed a sequel was ever green-lit off the back of this film.
1/2
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