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Thursday, 08 July 2004 |
  Club Dread had a few strikes against it going in. First, I don't like slasher movies, even when they are making fun of slasher movies. Second, it was the third slasher movie I have seen this year. Third, one of them, the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was actually pretty decent, which got my hopes up a bit. Fourth, I recently watched The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension for the umpteenth time, a movie that actually is as much silly fun as Club Dread incompetently attempts to be. In the end, I had to take half a dozen breaks in order to make it through Club Dread. This is the most annoyingly and painfully bad movie I have seen in quite some time
The movie opens with a shot of a virtually uninhabitable island, which is the location of a small, remote, tropical resort. I suppose this was the filmmakers' idea of humor. Unfortunately, that little joke is as funny as the movie gets. The resort is owned and run by Coconut Pete (Bill Paxton, what were you thinking?) who is a transparent ripoff of singer Jimmy Buffett. A boatload of twentysomethings arrives to the standard, not the least bit funny innuendos, drug references and generally stupid behavior.
After about 14 false alarms and very loud noises intended to make the viewer jump, it becomes apparent there is a psycho killer roaming the island bumping off the staff. An island legend seems to explain who this person is, but in true slasher fashion, it may not. Painfully unoriginal banter and death scenes drag on for what seems like an eternity and eventually the killer is revealed. What else is new?
What amazed me most about Club Dread is that it took slasher flicks, probably the only genre I have never been able to tolerate, to levels they may have never dreamt of. The appeal of taking already weak and painfully bad story lines and intentionally making them even weaker and more pointless is beyond me. After nearly 100 minutes of literally cringing at everything in this movie, I was exhausted. I needed a day to recover just so I could write this review.
The capper, what moves Club Dread into the area of the worst movie I have seen in years, is the unbearable sight of Bill Paxton as a long haired, stoned hippy. His performance is completely on par with the generally unbearable acting from the entire cast. Paxton has spent years building his acting stock, with hardly a misstep, until now. Bill, cash the check, spend the money, but don't do this again, ever.
Starring: Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske, Bill Paxton, Brittany Daniel.
Director: Jay Chandrasekhar
Studio: Fox Searchlight
Rated: R
Running Time: 97 mins
Release: 2003
Reviewer: John Rice
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