HELL FEST

It's not a novel premise, necessarily: a killer is stalking young people in a horror maze attraction in an amusement park during Halloween.

I don't remember seeing a slasher movie that felt so airy and carefree. It's a modest affair, but that's part of what makes it so special. It avoids quite a few slasher cliches - in particular, its young attractive cast aren't jammed into archetypes (The Jock, The Nerd, The Soulful Loner, etc.) but are instead given the freedom to simply be young people. And they're given space to breathe, quip, hang out, bullshit, and kvetch. They're a fun bunch to hang out with, to a point that it's genuinely alarming when they start getting killed off. Set inside amusement park haunted house thrill rides, the movie gives us the cinematic equivalent - cinematographer Jose David Montero catches a vibrant array of carnival colors, and the thing visually pops in ways few horror indies try to.

In a peculiar era where horror movies are making overt and strident gestures toward respectability it's easy to overlook a movie like Hell Fest. Though it doesn't punch up its more novel or political aspects those aspects are there. It manages to address toxic masculinity (via its antagonists stalking strategies) without gruesomely sexualizing its violence. In the end, it's as much a horror house ride as any of its settings, and though it doesn't overtly reinvent any wheels, it remains an engaging and worthwhile Halloween treat, right down to the truly unsettling coda.