Fuck the scene! Everyone dies!
SPOILER ALERT
Chris actually wanted to have a comfy evening with some horrormovies and candies. The first VHS tape, “Scare Wolf” is choosen. But what is this? Cat lancelot is laying lazy on his TV chair and makes no efforts to clear the field for him. So Chris decides to go to this dubious Halloween “Murder Party”. Well he is not really invited. He found the invitation accidentally on the street. But hey, who cares? Better than waiting for the cat to leave the chair…
Quickly he makes a Knight costume out of a cardboard box, bakes pumpking bread of that what is left from the pumpkinhead kids smashed infront of his door and is ready to leave.
When he finally arrives at a storage building, the strangly rouged and costumed party guests seem to have a boring time. But his appearance gives the whole mood a sudden kick. What a relief… Or maybe not? In the next scene we see Chris tied on a chair. Furthermore he finds out in a painful manner that he is the guest of honor of this “Murder Party” and that his life will be exhaled in an artful way this night...
Halloween inspired a lot of horrormovies since it is a nice frame for a movie of this genre. Plus the best thing about this yank feast is that you can buid in so many references to other movies thanks to the costumes…
Director Jeremy Saulnier does exactly the same. We see a group of Droogs, e.g. They belong to “A Clockwork Orange” as much as the sound of Ludwig van Beethoven. And another hommage is the really striking rouged Baseball Player from the “Warriors” (which also appears in a similar way in “ The Riffs” as far as I know).
The entry to the story is a real joy, because Chris gets introduced in a really funny way. We get to know he is a naïve character. The whole comedylike scenario gets crowned by the manual skills he shows by making his own costume. Almost surreal appears his way to the party and you really wanna know how things will develop.
Unfortunately after we get to know all the facts, the story loses it´s speed a bit. It seems like Saunier tried to stretch the middle part of his independend production to get a full-length feature. But after you get rewarded with a lot of sex, drugs and rock´n´roll paired with art and violence. Lotsa fooling around and chainsaw-brain action. A true ode to joy!
The mostly unknown Actors really do a great job. If you have any friends doing art you will have a lot of pleasure finding similarities to real existing (wannabe) artists, their lordly behavior and skin-deep talks…
The score is a mix of italo-and mainstreamhorrorsound with a pinch of 80ies Pop.
As a result I can say, “Murder Party” is a flick that is a pleasure to watch. Especially if you keep in mind that it was a low budget production although it doesn´t look like one
