The Horror Show
Dead Body
by Bobbin Ramsey
I have seen some bad movies in my time. I have watched “so bad it's good movies” and I have watched “so bad it's terrible” movies. I have never in my years watched a movie where things just happen. No plot progression, no congruent story, but then I watched Dead Body.
There will be spoilers, but do yourself a favor and don't even bother with this movie. There have been many before it with this same set up that outshines this amazingly boring movie. Don't watch this, go watch the 1986 classic April Fool's Day instead. The acting is better and it has an amazing story, but I digress. Now back to Dead Body.
This “movie” starts with the end. Well, not quite the end, but the twist reveal so you already know who the final girl is and that the murderer is someone that she knows. I really hate this trope in horror movies. It takes all the tension out of the movie. It feels like they were short a few minutes and figured they'd reuse footage and tack it onto the beginning. Such a lazy thing to do. We then get the lovely “Twelve Hours Earlier” title card and the movie actually starts. The story is basically nine high school buddies, who aren't really friends from what I can tell, all end up in the uptight guy's cabin. They have no characters. They're just ideas. Uptight guy, dorky outcast guy, cool guy, final girl that invites all the people that pisses off uptight guy, her boyfriend aka red herring, weird whiny girl, the druggie, and two Japanese exchange students that are the horniest people on the planet. They're also way too old to be in high school. Not as bad as the actors in Slaughter High, which is another movie you should watch besides this one, but still old enough to be off-putting. I don't like any of these people. They're all pretty terrible people.
I guess everybody gets bored of drinking and talking about Harvard, which is just shoved in your face that uptight guy is in line for Harvard behind final girl and the two Japanese students. They decide to play Dead Body which is like Werewolf mixed with Hide and Seek. I can't get over how bad these actors are. Not bad really, but more like cringe worthy. It's just so painful. They play the game and suddenly these people start dying. Just all of a sudden. No set up, just a big ol' stabbing party! You get stabbed! And you get stabbed! And YOU GET STABBED! I was surprised by how mundane stabbing can actually get.
This is when I tuned out a little. I got bored. There was the whiny girl that got really screechy. Just high pitch wailing at the top of her lungs and it freaked my cats out. I wished I was playing a game. This is when I noticed that whoever was doing the cinematography and the editing were bad at their jobs. Maybe it was the director's choice, but they would hold on a shot to the point I was screaming “cut!” at the screen. Not just once, several times. Maybe they thought it would bring artistic value to hold on an empty chair? Guess what, it didn’t.
The killer keeps killing these terrible vignettes of what high school students are like. Everyone is dead or injured but the final girl. We circle around to the footage shown at the beginning. Oh, it's uptight guy. It was only supposed to be him, final girl, and the two Japanese students, but final girl messed that up by being rude and bringing more people. He's third in line to go to Harvard and they were in his way! Of course, he just spills all of this out at the end. Why build a story when you can just exposition your way out of it in the climax!
I literally fell asleep during the screechy, screaming climax. It was that boring. I'm not too sure what happened. I'm sure final girl took out uptight guy. It's how these horrible things always end, with a cliché! I was so sad that this movie was so terrible. I wasted almost 80 minutes of my life on this. This is a concept that's been done so many times and so much better. It can still be done if you are creative and inventive! Dead Body was just a lazy movie and I hate lazy movies.
Robin Thompson, HMS
The Horror Show Menu.