2021's Slumber Party Massacre Successfully Kills off 30-Year Franchise

Call it a sequel, a reboot, a remake, or a re-imagining of the cult favorite series SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE from the 80’ and 90’s, but this updated story to the series does not belong anywhere near those classic horror films on your movie collection shelves. Overly campy with forced humor and comedy, 90 percent of the jokes fall flat in this gender-bending tale that could have been a really good next installment of the series if they would have just stuck to the original premise of the film.

We meet the daughter of one of the original girls from the series, as she and her friends return to the cabin where her mother escaped the clutches of Russ Thorn to finally take him out and put an end to the horrors they had been living with their whole lives.

Sounds like a great setup on paper, but the director decided to make a statement, flipping tried-and-true horror genre tropes of the past into a laughable mess of a film that role-reverses the men and women of horror films and takes you out of the film totally before you can start getting into the horror aspect of the movie. And by then it’s too late to be saved.

Filled with fan service and easter eggs from the past films, Director Danishka Esterhazy tried her hardest to appeal to the horror fans, as if to say, “Look at this! You remember this, right?” Well, yes, we do remember it, but we do not care because we are too busy cringing over the nonsensical dialogue and low-tier jokes that we have been subjected to throughout the film.

Starting off as a dark comedy, the attempt to switch into a full-fledged horror film during the last section of the movie still cannot save it from the tone that was already set from the beginning. The over-the-top kills mixed with amateur level visuals and scripted open mic stand-up jokes, is then topped off with a dash of unneeded forced feminism that is basically thrown in your face. It all serves to take the viewer completely out of the film.

Strong women have always been a staple of horror films of the past. From Nancy in Nightmare on Elm Street, Laurie from Halloween, to the final girls of the modern age, the female leads should be characters that we root for and champion to overcome the big baddie that is stalking them. You don’t care about a single female role in this movie because it tells you that need to, and if you don’t you are a misogynistic male pig. And to prove that you are, if you cry about the male shower scene you must be homophobic as well.

The only thing this movie successfully killed off was the franchise it was meant to bring back from the dead.