Director: Todd Strauss-Schulson
Cast: Taissa Farmiga, Malin Akerman, Alexander Ludwig

When someone or something suddenly becomes successful, what is the first reaction of the public? Well, I think in most cases it's both interest and admiration. But when that famous person or thing continues to be successful for an extended period, what then happens? Often resentment or annoyance begins to build in the public. And after that point, what usually happens is that people start to make fun of the person or thing. This sometimes happens in the world of motion pictures, where people take a specific object made with serious intentions and make fun of it. For instance, take the 2017 movie CHiPS. As you no doubt have guessed, even if you haven't seen the movie, it is a feature length movie take on the popular and beloved late 1970s / early 1980s CHiPS television series. This movie was made into a comedy, a decision I think could have worked since I will admit the television show (which I have a soft spot for) did have some goofy and cheesy touches despite being serious for the most part. But thanks to actor / writer / director Dax Shepard, the movie was pretty much a total misfire. For starters, while the movie had CHiPS officers named Ponch and Jon, that was the only connection the movie had to the series. Also, while the original television series was family-friendly (no police officer character on the show pulled out his gun at any time, for example), Shepard not only including hard core violence such as bloody decapitations, he threw in graphic sex scenes to boot. Actually, I could have forgiven the movie for the R-rated material and very loose ties to the TV series had there had been a lot of laughs, but I only counted two or three mildly amusing moments in the entire 100-minute running time. Shepard seemed to think that simply showcasing violent and sexual material would automatically bring in laughs.

If you really want to see a comic take on the CHiPS television show, I would strongly advise you to instead to seek out the satire that was published in MAD Magazine. Anyway, as you probably know, that particular movie adaptation wasn't the first time Hollywood has spent a movie making fun of one particular serious TV show or serious movie. But there have certainly been movie comedies that don't stick to making fun of one specific TV show or movie. There have been movies where whole genres have been made fun of. Some of the more famous examples have been Blazing Saddles (which made fun of the western genre) and Airplane! (which poked fun at disaster movies.) In the past, I reviewed a few such movies for this web site, like Rustlers' Rhapsody. Anyway, there are certainly a lot of genres that just seem ready to be spoofed. One of them is the slasher film genre. If you think about it for a long time, there are a lot of elements in examples of this genre that keep being repeated over and over ad nauseum. For example, most slasher films keep using the same few basic settings, like learning institutes. Many like to have the slashing going on during some kind of holiday. Many of these films set up in the first few minutes a violent episode years earlier that somehow is the trigger for the new mayhem to come. The killers in these movies love to wear masks and/or display their point of view from their eyes. The victims in these movies tend to be very brain-dead teenagers or young adults with sex on their minds. And for the most part, these films almost always seem to end with one remaining heroine going one-on-one with the killer in a desperate struggle to the death.

As it turns out, in the past there have been some cinematic attempts to parody the slasher film genre, such as the movies Student Bodies and Scary Movie. But these few movies have for the majority of the time been really bad. I think the reason for that is that when you think about it, slasher movies have been become so familiar with their elements that you can tell that the filmmakers are not taking them completely seriously. To a degree, these films are already ridiculous, so you'd be mocking something already silly; it's like years ago when Cracked Magazine printed a parody of the already silly comedy The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell Of Fear (retitled The Smell Of Beer, ha ha). For those reasons, I have not actively sought out movies that parody the slasher movie genre. But when I came across the slasher film spoof The Final Girls, I decided to give it whirl, because the movie promised a unique twist in its viewpoint of the genre. In the beginning of the movie, we meet a young woman named Max (Farmiga, American Horror Story), whose mother Amanda (Akerman, Watchmen) years ago in the 1980s starred in a slasher movie named Camp Bloodbath, which in the years since became a cult movie. However, when a retrospective screening is announced, Max is reluctant to come because she is still grieving the death of her mother three years earlier. Eventually she is convinced to come, and she joins her friends to attend the screening. But during the screening of the movie, the theater catches on fire, and in quick notice there is chaos. Max manages to find an escape route for her friends and herself through the screen the movie is being projected on, but after passing through the screen, Max and her friends find themselves in a forest. Some confusing moments subsequently pass before Max and her friends realize that they have been transported in the world of Camp Bloodbath. They make their way to the camp in the movie, meeting along the way characters in the movie - including the character played by Max's mother - and having earlier finding there is no escape from this world, realize they must try to prevent the camp's counsellors and themselves from being slaughtered by the mad slasher who will eventually show up.

Sitting down to watch The Final Girls (and knowing its premise), I knew that the creative force behind the movie would have quite a challenge ahead of them, one of them being that the movie would require two groups of completely different characters, one group being your typical '80s bonehead slasher film young adults, and the other being more savvy and modern young adults. Not only that, the movie would have to find a way of making both groups fit well when meshed together. To answer if the movie managed to do all of those things, I'll start by discussing how the two different groups come across. When it comes to the "real" characters in the movie consisting of Max and her friends, they are a pretty amiable group of young adults. They have feelings that we can identify with, such as not being all that high strung, wanting good friends, and to treat people well while being treated well themselves. While they are not super smart, at the same time they are more than a few rungs up the intelligence scale compared to most other cinematic adults, and they definitely have the brains to deduce multiple possible escapes from their dire situation. I liked them. As for the young adult characters in the Camp Bloodbath movie, although they are expectedly naive and sex-obsessed, they are not excessively so in these and other regards. That was the right decision, because if they had been crasser, it would have been hard to care for them, and would make us wonder at times why the "real" characters are trying to help these cinematic characters. In both groups of characters, all the actors playing them give appealing performances. But the most kudos has to go to actor Adam Devine (Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates) who plays the cliched character of the jock camp counsellor with so much gusto that I found him very funny despite this character always having sex on his mind.

When both groups of characters are shoved together and forced to deal with each other, it more often than not generates a lot of genuine comedy. For example, in the scenes where Max and her friends try to tell the various counsellors in a number of ways that they know the counsellors and what they will do (and also tell them of their possible fates), the subsequent bewilderment and sometimes unexpected reactions lead to quite a few chuckles and laughs instead of coming across as forced and heavy-handed. Director Todd Strauss-Schulson (A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas) puts in a lot of bright energy here and in other humorous aspects in the movie. I'm not sure if all the gags in the movie were in the original script, but I will say that Strauss-Schulson ability to execute any particular gag seems very confident. There are other kinds of humor generated in The Final Girls not just limited to the clashing characters. The movie has an amusing yet affectionate viewpoint of the 1980s, ranging from a parody of the legendary Vestron Video logo, to a trailer seen for the Camp Bloodbath movie that is a dead on (and very funny) recreation of horror movie trailers of the time. The musical score is a recreation of Friday The 13th's "Ch-ch-ch-ha-ha-ha" music by Harry Manfredini. There are wicked twists made to the normal cliches of slasher movies, such as when Max and her friends figure out a way to generate a black and white flashback just before the masked killer can plant his machete into their bodies. Also, there are individual moments that may not keep the plot moving but provide momentary welcome comic relief, such as when one of Max's friends has a discussion concerning a dirty magazine with the Adam Devine character and revealing to the jock that both of his parents are men. And there are also unexpected surprises such as when Max and friends make their way to the camp shortly after being transported into this world, and the title of the movie they are in zooms over their heads.

But with The Final Girls dealing with the slasher genre, you know that there have to be some scenes concerning horror. In these parts of the movie, things are somewhat weaker than the humor. I am sure many horror fans will be disappointed that the movie was made in a manner so that it would get a PG-13 rating - no sex, no nudity, and not that much blood. It seemed a little odd to me that a slasher spoof would avoid major elements of the genre, so much so that a restrained feeling is often felt. Another problem I had was that the masked slasher character (obviously inspired by Jason Voorhees) is actually pretty boring. Yes, I know he's a mute hulk with nothing but killing on his mind, but he should still have had some presence and personality. Related to this is that almost all of the various scenes of this slasher doing his thing don't come across as shocking, scary, or even mildly creepy. Instead, it comes across as a matter of fact. While director Strauss-Schulson seems a bit uneasy with the horror elements, he does throw in some eye-catching camerawork and a few memorable visuals as compensation despite having a pretty tight budget to work with. Keeping the low budget in mind is necessary to be able to forgive for some shortcomings such as some terrible cinematography (extremely bright whites mixed with murky and dark colors), a minimum amount of set dressing, and some poor special effects (mostly confined to the shoddy CGI work depicting a car crash). So despite some really good things to be found in The Final Girls, it's definitely a movie that should be approached with some patience and anticipation for these rough moments. But even with that in mind, it's still entertaining enough for horror fans who want to see some amusing ribbing of a particular horror genre that's been milked to death in previous serious efforts.... and it's certainly a lot better than Student Bodies and Scary Movie.

(Posted May 13, 2024)