All My Friends Are Dead

Horror films, as a genre, have always cannibalized one another. It's a fairly rare thing to see an actual new idea in horror. When a new idea does come about, the film makes a mark.. and is then copied repeatedly. This film is NOT one of those unique horror films.

If you've ever wanted to explain how horror films cannibalize each other, this film is a PERFECT example of creating a horror film without one single unique idea and just using a collection of stolen plots and motivations from OTHER films strung together.

This film starts with 10 minutes of just random back story to try and set up some history - using a concept taken from the movie "Seven".

Then it goes on to a typical young adult road trip ultimately ending up in a "Cabin in the Woods".

It's a very odd choice to put the title sequence here..... 20 minutes into the film.....

Then the story continues a la "I Know What you Did Last Summer" in addition to borrowing heavily from the "Saw" and "Scream" franchise.

.... a callback to "Seven" (Or perhaps "The Collector")... and then "Scream" again.... and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" Again...

Acting was a mix of terrible to passable. But as a story it was just a bad copy of every popular horror concept from the past.

------- Pass -------------

Sure, it's not the best horror ever, but nonetheless, in a non pretentious way, pretty enjoyable. There's the well known premise of a bunch of college kids stranded in a remote villa, and then a masked killer starts hovering round the house and slashing one by one, up until (of course) a last one standing. They did put in a few nice plot twists, like the identity of the killer that I (stupidly) hadn't seen coming at all, and another surprising one in the end, keeping you on the edge of your chair until the credits start rolling.

The acting is just so, so, but in this kind of movie: who cares?! All characters are equally unsympathetic, so you couldn't care less what happens to them. Which is quite a lot, since they didn't hold back on the violence and gore, with pretty original killings, it's definitely not for the tender hearted.

If you want deep dialogues and impressive cinematography, you'd better skip this one; but if you're in for some 80 minutes of pleasant old school slasher fun, you won't be disappointed!

The movie was well acted by a pretty decent ensemble cast, but the writing made every character extremely unlikable and took away any regret the viewer might have at their demises.

The viewer ends up asking themselves a question from scene one...are college aged people really that shallow, mean, self-centered and dumb as these characters??? They are clueless in every step of the movie and of course break every rule of the "Surviving a horror movie" rulebook. Situations which normal intelligent people would be wary of; they jump into without any bit of caution!

The LGBT underlying theme is somewhat of a surprise, but it also paints a pretty negative picture of same-sex people, in fact this film paints a bad picture of LOTS of people, young people are flakey and unintelligent, guys are all horndogs, girls are addicted to social media exploitation and are constantly looking for a sexual hook-up even if they dislike the partner!. It also leaves a VERY strong negative impression of the police!

Wow! Talk about insulting every group of people equally!!!!

The trailer for this movie looked interesting so i gave it a shot. The intro is a bit confusing and goes on for a while but once we finally introduced to the main characters, the movie pick a better pace.

Most of the characters were extremely annoying and most viewers will probably be eager to see them meet their demise, but i think it was mostly done on purpose.

The "hostel-light" scenes were interesting and i kinda wish there would had been more of them. Eventually the movie turn more into your regular slasher but it make sense storywise. The kills are overall gory/bloody enough but some of the practical effects were a bit amateurish and looked kinda fake.

The Scream part about the mystery killer is fine but i figured most of it way before the ending. Keeping this spoiler free, was the payoff worth it? Kinda... but part of the ending felt a bit wonky.

Overall its a decent enough slasher flick. Won't break any ground but enjoyable for fans of the genre wich are always on the lookout for a new one.

I really had alot of fun watching this one. I will say I didn't have it figured out at all. They do a good job keeping the killers identity a secret until the end with a nice revelation scene.

This was heavily publicized for being Jo Jo Siwas first horror and slasher movie, but yet they cast her as a character in flashback scenes. Just didn't get that part.

Overall I absolutely loved the gory kills and it was a blast watching how the seven deadly sins were recreated for each of the kids brutal deaths. It was fun watching most of these intolerable characters scrambling to survive while being picked off one by one.

The ending was a little underwhelming being that the killer's motive ended up not being totally justified.

Fun watch though and is available on amazon prime with the screambox subscription. I'm giving this one a 2nd watch, one of my favorites I've seen in theaters this year!