As someone who loves both politics and horror, this film should have been a slam dunk for me. However, the over the top acting, confusing plot, and the not so subtle message about politics that everyone who pays any ounce of attention to current events is already aware of made it a dud for me.
The movie definitely drew inspiration from Scream, even going as far as casting a Dewey lookalike for their cop character. And while slashers are at their best when they don't take themselves too seriously, there still should be some tension. This movie was all about leaning into the funny, to the detriment of maintaining any sense of doom. Every scene leading up to a kill was so overloaded with dramatic looks or dialogue that you couldn't help but laugh. Oh and if you're expecting jump scares - forget about it.
Even that could have been perhaps forgiven if the plot would have made more sense. But honestly, I'm still not sure what all happened. There was too much going on.
To be honest, I think this film could have left off the graphic kills, as they were poorly executed and instead leaned into a pg-13 rating, tightened up the script to make it make a little more sense and add more tension, and played around more with the highschool caricature characters, and it would have been tremendously better. A silly slasher geared towards teens might have been better. But alas, I'm not sure the political message would have hit as hard with that audience.
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!
I'm still trying to figure out the timeline of events and motives of all of the different killers involved in the movie. Melissa wanted to kill Allison because of her dad? Why was Deputy Miller involved? Did he want to kill the commissioner? Why did he kill Britt and Tyler then? Or did Adam kill them? And why go through all this trouble to get rid of the mayoral candidates when Mr. Jackson seemed so well loved that all he would have had to do was run for mayor himself and he probably would have gotten elected.
I also do so hate when a movie hits me over the head with a message. I get it, I get it. Both sides suck.
This movie, in the end, just tried to do way too much. Oh Scream did three killers? We will DOUBLE THAT. Oh people like the Purge? Let's sprinkle that in here too. It seems like they did things just for the sake of doing them. Ultimately, not a well done film, in my opinion.
