Where I Watched it: Tubi

English Audio Description?: Yes

Narrated By: William Michael Redmond

Around these here parts, we have plenty of these events like the one at the center of Hellfest. Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights brings people in droves. So, I kind of used that as a measuring tool for how this film is set up.

The movie opens with our random opening kill. Someone has to die, and it might as well be a poorly developed character. So now we know there is a killer, so we can learn more about our core cast, right? Not so much. Character development is almost non-existent here, but this group of hapless young folk head out to Hellfest. It’s a bad idea, because somewhere in the crowd is a real killer, who starts following them around.

Some of the kill sequences are properly drawn out, and gory for horror fans. but there are definitely some that are just a stab and run. I was quite disappointed by that. In fact, the one character I actually wanted to survive, does not, and their kill scene is pretty weak sauce. It starts out inspired, but it evolves into that person besting the killer and by the rules of horror movies, probably should have lived, but instead of the killer getting creative again, he goes in for a stab and run. It’s not the strongest choice for that scene.

This is a mixed bag with some cool ideas, and I’d recommend this film ever so slightly. The audio description does a terrific job immersing us in this festival and its attractions, it’s just the script for the actual film fails what the director and cast are trying to do so many times.

The ending may or may not be divisive.

Final Grade: C+