Grim Weekend

I found Grim Weekend's colourful cover at my local Blockbuster Video and was intrigued as to what kind of movie it actually was. I checked with the IMDB and no one had yet posted a review, but thankfully there was a link to the film's official site, which included a small preview. From the clip I gathered that it didn't include the most talented cast in the world, but it looked plausibly tight and brimming with suspense! Believe me, if you've seen it you'll understand where I'm coming from. Keeping in mind the trailer is only two minutes long and the movie is over eighty, it's not always overly conclusive as to what's in store for you when you finally watch. I had a good feeling about this one though and went ahead and bought an ex-rental copy anyway. This is listed on most websites as a TV movie, but judging by some of the bad language – the C word, no less – I found the idea of that rather questionable. It looks more to me like a typical direct to video effort, but who am I to argue?

In the opening we see a point of view murder that proves Director Bob Willems is a big fan of Halloween and is paying his homage (or completely ripping it off? Whatever you want to call it!). An adulterous wife, or girlfriend (actually we never find out who she is and this scene has NOTHING to do with the rest of the movie!) is on the phone when someone creeps up and stabs her in the stomach. As she recoils from the wound she asks ‘what did you do', which I actually found pretty amusing! I kept expecting the killer to reply ‘what do you think I did dummy'; but the scriptwriter instead decided to try to keep things creepy… Next up we meet Brandon Walker (Ken Hebert), an office executive that's planning a weekend getaway to a remote cabin out in the woods. It'd be a pretty boring movie if he went alone, so we are soon introduced to his date Tracy (Amanda Watson) and their friends Susan (Chris Bruck) and Mark (Hank Fields). Whilst on the long journey to the previously abandoned house, they meet Diane (Melissa Bale) in a bar and she soon joins the troupe of merry campers. After they have arrived and night falls, the group sit round a fire and tell ghost stories – so far so Friday the 13th -, but we see that they are being watched by an ominous presence. The next morning when everyone wakes up, Susan has disappeared and someone has filled the area with bizarre mutilated dolls. Before long they are stranded with only a ruthless killer clown for company!

Grim Weekend is a prime example of a movie putting most of the good bits into the trailer, leaving about an hour and a half of screen time totally devoid of anything redeeming. There are only three, yes THREE on screen murders in the whole film. The first is about two minutes into the feature and the next over an hour after. They're all mostly bloodless and instantly forgettable, which makes me wonder why the BBFC rated this as an 18. The killer clown is especially obnoxious, spending most of his time singing nursery rhymes or chopping wood for what seems like an eternity before he finally gets to terrorising the campers. The performances are as horrible as you can possibly imagine and the characters are mostly unsympathetic and flat. Mark finds a gutted victim lying in the woodland struggling for breath and makes no attempt to comfort or help him. He just looks at him completely emotionlessly and then wanders off leaving him to die (?). The most likeable character of the bunch was Denise the under acted slut and I'm sure that she was meant to be the little bitch that the audience hates! I couldn't help but find myself rooting for her instead of the plain Jane that was meant to grab the viewer's vote of sympathy. When the gang enter a bar early on in the movie, they meet a prostitute called Sophia (Jamie Hartzog), who in a few lines proves to be far more attractive and talented than any of the other lame ‘actors' that plague the screen throughout. Why couldn't she have played a bigger part?

Thankfully it doesn't suffer from a lack of lighting like so many of its counterparts and the director manages a fair few decent shots. Admittedly the ending was quite unexpected, owing a sly nod perhaps to The Texas chainsaw Massacre without over using the influence. Finding strange dolls around the house started as a fairly macabre touch, but the idea gets tired very quickly, which sadly the crew failed to notice. It was a brave attempt by the director to try and extract fear without using many murders or too much gore. However an extreme lack of momentum and no apparent filling leaves Grim Weekend ultimately looking like a hollow and empty shell. The director opens the usual bag of slasher platitudes including a silly point of view shot through a clown mask; nevertheless his inexperience is far too glaring to gain any merit out of them and he doesn't even try to add anything new to the formula. I bought this on the same day that I got the 25th anniversary Halloween DVD. Watching the special features, I noticed that John Carpenter took Halloween to someone from 20th Centaury Fox without it's excellent score and surprisingly they said that ‘it just wasn't scary'. The amusing thing was, what the hell did the producers think was frightening about this rubbish? It makes you wonder about a few films, doesn't it! There really is very little to recommend about this lazy and flat lined effort. It's tedious, poorly constructed and incredibly unatmospheric. Next time I get something like this, I think I'll keep my expectations a little lower.