A masked serial killer turns a horror-themed amusement park into his own personal playground, terrorizing a group of friends while the rest of the patrons believe that it is all part of the show.
“Hell Fest” is a slasher movie with a rather interesting concept: a masked killer masquerading as one of the crew in a Halloween amusement park, killing people while confused bystanders thinks it’s part of the show. In one regard, “Hell Fest” delivers pretty well when it comes to the setting: the amusement park looks totally awesome, and while we were both watching it we agreed that the most exciting thing in the whole movie was to see new parts of the park. Unfortunately, that also tells wonders about what this movie lacks: real suspense and a mystery surrounding the killer, both of which are, unfortunately, non-existent. We find out early in the movie that the killer is a stranger (no mystery about who he is), and while the first murder is pleasantly vicious, the next killings are quite uninspired and lacking in gruesomeness.
Now, slasher movies rarely brings anything new to the horror genre. A group of people gets stalked and murdered, one by one, by a mysterious killer. You’ve seen it before, and you’re going to see it again if you ever keep watching slasher movies. However, what a lot of them at least manages to keep going for them, is an actual mystery surrounding the killer (makes you wonder who it is, and often comes as a surprise/twist), or gory/gruesome murder scenes. “Hell Fest” has neither, but a totally awesome amusement park at least…
All that being said: it’s not a bad movie, and should easily be able to entertain you if you take it for an easy-going popcorn movie. But with such an awesome setting, it just could have been so much more.
Director: Gregory Plotkin
Country & year: USA, 2018
Actors: Cynthea Mercado, Stephen Conroy, Amy Forsyth, Bex Taylor-Klaus, Reign Edwards, Christian James, Matt Mercurio, Roby Attal
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1999890/
