Plot
Christopher Vale was locked away
in a mental institution after witnessing the brutal murder of his family and
suffering horrendous burns as a result. Ten years later, he escapes and heads back to the
house he grew up in on Halloween night. A group of teenagers are there having a
party and unaware that their fun and games are about to be gate crashed by a
very angry and vengeful mental patient.
Review
Sound familiar? It better.
Halloween Night is from The Asylum, the great
little studio who bring you cheap versions of big budget films, affectionately
known as 'mockbusters.' Didn't catch Transformers?
Fear not because The Asylum has Transmorphers! Don't forget Snakes on
a Train. The Day the Earth Stood Still? No, you mean the low budget
The Day the Earth Stopped. I think you get the message. No doubt made to cash in on Rob
Zombie's remake of Halloween, it's hard to say which is worse. I'll
probably give that accolade to Zombie's film since most people expect these
Asylum flicks to be little more than weak rehashes whereas Zombie's film was
simply a horribly misguided take on Carpenter's original story. What makes me
laugh even more is the "based on a true story" line that is thrown onto the
front cover. This is certainly not based on a true story although based on
someone else's script this most definitely is (Carpenter better have received
royalties for this).
Halloween Night is a
standard Halloween-themed slasher and runs according to clockwork for the most.
You'll know exactly where the film is headed, what is going to happen next, etc. But the clock ticks and tocks
well out of sequence. There's so many things that are left unexplained by the
plot and so many questions that are left unanswered, it's best not to think
about it in all honesty because it will hurt your head. It's like a lot of the
plot threads were thrown in simply because someone had seen them in other slasher films and they thought their inclusion would make for a good film. Ultimately, I don't understand why
Christopher Vale is actually killing people. Forgetting the obvious fact that
this is a Halloween rip-off and the masked killer must kill teenagers, there's
no real explanation given. He's insane, granted, but that's not necessarily a
prelude to becoming a slasher, especially one who is intelligent enough to do
the things this guy does. He's silent and deadly which works for Michael Myers
and Jason Voorhees because they're big, unstoppable monsters but this weakling
is very much human and gets the snot kicked out of him at one point. In another
ridiculous moment of how not to be a deadly slasher, Vale is actually taken
hostage by someone after a fight breaks out at a fancy dress party and the
police arrive. It's a pretty dire state of affairs when your film's main killer
is actually being held at gunpoint as a hostage.
Halloween Night does have
a reasonable body count but there's little imagination in the way people are
dispatched. Thankfully the lack of creativity in the kills is more than made up
by the copious amount of blood on display. The Asylum at least know how to let
their films get messy.
Not only that but they seem to know what makes a good slasher flick. Whilst I'm
not the biggest fan of this film, it still delivers the bottom line goodies. And
one of the main staple ingredients of the slasher flick is the nudity.
Halloween Night throws in a couple of lesbians for good measure within the
first ten minutes - a sign of desperation by the writers struggling to find
anything worthwhile or a positive statement of intent for the rest of the film?
The problem is that everything gets taken too seriously and these B-movie
elements could work in the film's favour if the script allowed it. Part of The
Asylum's main drawback with their cheesy films is that they take themselves too
seriously. They're daft rip-offs and everyone involved in making them knows it
except for the script writers. Why not make things a bit more light-hearted?
Throw in some in-jokes. Just do something other than play it serious because the
material is too daft to take seriously. As a result, everything comes off really
stern-laced and bland.
Verdict
Halloween Night
is a terrible Halloween rip-off and it's bottom of the barrel stuff even
on it's own slasher value. If you wanting to watch something like this, why not
just stick on the original Halloween for the umpteenth time? You'll get
infinitely more enjoyment from watching that again than you would watching this
for the first time.
