Murder Party (2007)

Accepting a strange party invitation, a middle-aged man finds that the event is really a ruse by a group of psychopaths intending to kill him only to continually thwart their attempts in the process and has to save himself from the remaining group finishing what they started.This could've been quite the fun and enjoyable effort. What really tends to give this one a lot to work with is the exceptionally silly and goofy premise at the forefront of this one. The general concept of their ruse makes for a fun twist that's given right at the beginning of the film and the utterly cheesy premise has a lot of time to really work itself out with plenty of crazy encounters featuring him at the mercy of the group. The initial scenes of him mingling about the group where he's unaware of what they're going to do to him as they begin getting really obscure and off-the-wall makes for an overall stellar start to the film. As well, the way this quickly delves into the bonkers territory with their games and torture tactics which has a sense of unease in what's going on as they go through their routines and games with him which is where this one does slip somewhat but still has enough overt weirdness about it to really generate some fun times with their treatment of him setting up the film's best aspects in the final half. Consisting of a series of chases around not only their captive warehouse but also the neighboring art installation which ramps up the gore nicely but also has some thrilling action overall. Given that there's a lot of stellar gore and bloodshed, this here really makes for quite a fun time while it does have a few minor problems. The film's main issue is that it tends to downplay its stellar premise from the get- go with the idea of basically strapping him down in a chair for the main part of the film. He doesn't have much to do for almost nearly an hour into this and then has just slightly more to do than that in the overall finale so he really could've been written out of the film and not changed it much. That really does lower this one significantly since he doesn't do anything and has nothing to do with the story overall, rendering him somewhat useless than what should've been the case. As well, most of that is due to the film's other big issue with the really banal and overlong round of interviewing they go through which takes up so much time to accomplish nothing but irritation as nothing happens during these countless sessions and manages to drag this out with it's meandering and utterly unnecessary moments which are unneeded in the end. As well as the somewhat obvious low-budget nature of the film, these here are what really lower this one.Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and heavy drug use.

'Murder Party' is about just that. A bunch of pretentious (psychopathic!) art students send out random invitations for strangers to attend the titular Halloween 'murder party.' Their reasons... they want to kill them (and call it 'art').Only one person is lonely enough to take them up on their invite. A loser who basically has no friends and makes his own costume out of cardboard drops by, only to find himself tied up and gagged while the nut-jobs decide how best to murder him.Now, the problem I had with it was that our unwitting 'hero' spends most of his time tied up and gagged. Therefore, we hardly get to know much about him, other than what we saw at the beginning, which basically shows us how much of a loser he is. Therefore, it's hard to relate to him or care much about his predicament. We really get to know his captors more them him for the first two thirds of the movie. And his captors aren't the sort of people you'd really want to get to know.The gang of murderous art students are a pretty awful bunch. Yes, they're the 'villains' of the movie, so we're hardly meant to root for them, but without a decent hero to follow there's no one you're going to care that much about.There are plenty of murders and the natural gore to go with it, but there isn't really that much story. There's a few nice moments of black humour which help out the viewing and it is a pretty short film (it needs to be!).It's not awful, but I felt like there were long periods of time that felt like they had only been put in there to extend the runtime of a movie that doesn't really have enough plot to warrant it being anything other than a TV episode (length).

First things first. This is a low budget, simple, horror comedy. Don't expect Saw or Seven or even Hostel you are not going to get it. You are not going to get effects, nudity or tear inducing performances.But cheap doesn't mean bad. The acting in this film is excellent and the characters (although ludicrous parodies) are believable in their own ways and totally engaging.The humour is mouth-of-sand dry which was perfect.The sets are simple but well lit and the camera work superb. The makers of this film obviously cared about the project and the director used his limited resources intelligently and didn't over-stretch.I was expecting to see a typical stupid, badly lit, badly scripted, badly acted, made-for-TV film but this is anything but that. The story is simple but quirky enough to keep you interested.This is top of the lower budget horror, very funny and professionally executed.

Despite the silly name, Murder Party is a surprisingly well-made movie that takes itself seriously only in the bits where it mattered. The director described it as "Breakfast Club but with chainsaws and hard drugs" but I felt like it was more Tarantino meets Kevin Smith and they get together and double team Sam Raimi. Which I guess kinda gets the same effect. But still.The plot is a stereotypically simple one: Lonely guy finds an invite to a "murder party" (see what they did there?) and decides to attend out of boredom (and because his cat, Sir Lancelot, refuses to get out of his chair). This plunges him into a nightmare world where dimwitted hipster art-major-flunkies vie desperately for the attention their friend Alexander through MurderArt™ (i.e. they plan to kill the main character for the sake of art) and also take entirely too many drugs while doing it. Meanwhile, our hero, who's almost as idiotic as his captors, is sitting in his goofy-ass cardboard knight costume and continually screwing up his escape plans with sheer incompetence.Most of the movie feels like a parody of horror movies, because it constantly takes horror stereotypes and either tips them on their heads or transforms them into Shaun-of-the-Dead-esque gags. Throughout, there are some truly hilarious points that really display the talents of both the writers and the actors.But when it comes time for the movie to actually be a legitimate horror movie, it really does hunker down and deliver in an incredibly satisfying way. And it's not just the gore/special effects, which are by themselves -very- impressive. When a character's face gets burnt off, the makeup is so good I honestly found it very difficult not to look away.But it's got the suspense aspect as well. You're really terrified for the main character by the end of it, because the events are set up so well, and the way they unfold keeps you glued to the screen until the very end.On top of all this, the movie is beautifully shot. The director has a real eye for what makes an aesthetically pleasing shot, whether it's of the hero making pumpkin bread or somebody's head being ripped apart with a chainsaw. So kudos to that, too.Now, I purposefully left out plot-related spoilers because I really, truly want everyone and anyone who reads this to go out and see this film. I only knocked it down a star because the actors were admittedly not fantastic and there were a couple low-budget effects that offset the relatively high quality demonstrated through the rest of the movie that left a slightly bad taste in my mouth, but they were easily overlooked.Also, if you get a chance, get your hands on a version with the special features and watch the Making Of short. The story behind this movie is genuinely heart-warming and inspirational, especially to anyone who's even vaguely considering film-making as a career.If you like senseless gore, making fun of pretentious hipsters, watching people take hard drugs, or seeing a middle aged man running around in a stupid looking cardboard costume, this movie is for you.