Working in a video-store, a teen wanting to follow in her father's footsteps as the town slasher for their rental service line of horror films finally gets her chance when an accident forces her to go to high school to follow her intended victims, but complications arise that threaten to derail the experience.
This was a massively enjoyable and fantastic genre commentary. One of the finer aspects of this one is the spectacular atmosphere created here involving the killer haunting the town and how it operates. Creating the kind of environment offering the father figure as a maniacal serial killer using the rules of slasher films as a guide for how to operate, the resulting work being distributed as a rental tape in their video shop for clueless customers to rent, and the resulting chaos that emerges as she tries to force her way into the family business, the main setup her is immensely intriguing with quite a lot to like. The ease with which they openly discuss the subject matter and how they operate their lives in the town allows for a lively tone in the beginning with how it sets up the mindset of a film-slasher rather than a serial killer with how they're shown to operate in the heat of the moment. The fact that it goes from that into a spectacular build-up of friendship that goes on while attempting to go about the traditional rules of a slasher film. Forced to go to high school to scout her prey, the idea of her taking an interest in the rebellious student the more they hang out makes for a nice bit of conflict with her father as that conflicts with the rules of a slasher villain. The reckless behavior and free-spirited nature exhibited should paint her as a classic victim in a slasher film and going about it here where her personal feelings towards them makes it harder to knock them off as there's a fine mix of comedic interactions and genuine pathos experienced while this plays out. Going for the romantic subtext as well over this section while trying to paint the rules of the slasher film villain who has to take over the mantel for her infirmed father is a fun touch and creates further disillusion between everyone for how it tries to change up the traditional formula in these films. The finale here, involving the surviving group heading off to a local campground for safety only to realize that they've stumbled into his birthplace, the way it goes against those traditional formulas by having the group far more cognizant of the rules than they expect and use that to undermine her attempts at bringing them together for following the rules of the films. These are based on the series of encounters at the campsite which not only takes on the type of wild confrontations and over-the-top stalking present in the rest of the film which has a slew of disgustingly brutal and wild kill scenes featuring equally wild gore and deaths that are as similarly over-the-top. The setup takes a bit to buy into how the whole series of exploits are captured on videotape for others to watch as films that no one else in town seems to recognize at all, but if that's not much of an issue there's little to dislike here.
Rated Unrated/R: Extreme Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.
