The Horror Show
Most Likely to Die
by Anthony DiBlasi
Revenge slasher flicks can be fun. Flicks like Return to Horror High, Happy Birthday to Me, and The Burning are always a good time; that's why I was so excited to see there was a new slasher to add to the list. Unfortunately, Most Likely to Die falls very short of the greats that came before.
I'm going to try my best not to spoil this for anyone, it's gonna be hard because I figured out who the killer was before he even appeared in the movie. It wasn't that difficult to figure out, they kind of subtly smack you in the face with it during the opening credits.
The plot is your basic “a group of jerks hurt the loner, loner gets revenge” trope. A group of classmates who ran yearbook committee have once again gathered to help get ready for their ten year reunion. On the wall, they have their senior photos labeled with their senior superlatives. You know, most likely to have their name in lights, most likely to be in a cheap rip off of Slaughter High. As they're filling out name tags, they realize that one of the group still has one of the yearbooks that had a defaced picture of the class outcast who they called John Doe. Apparently, the guy was just forgettable hence the nickname. In retaliation, John brought a gun to school but it was found before he could go all psycho. John gets sent off and the others go on to live dysfunctional lives. Now it seems that John Doe is back, adorned in a graduation cap that is equipped with razor blades, a gown, and a mask that resembles his mutilated photo, and boy, is he mad.
I thought that the deaths would be way more clever than what they were. John Boy is killing people in the style of their superlatives. You'd think that would be so cool, but it's not. The best death doesn't even happen to one of the main group. The effects were very cool, but there just weren’t enough of them. There also wasn't a whole lot of any kind of slashing in this slasher flick. I think there were six deaths in total, but a lot happen off screen.
There are a lot of problems in this movie; the writing is cliché, the acting is bland, it's just visually unappealing, and the ending is dismal. There are too many survivors and one of them is Perez Hilton and he is just terrible.
In my honest opinion, I wouldn't bother with Most Likely to Die. I would find one of the other movies I talked about in the first paragraph. Most of them are classics of the revenge genre. Return to Horror High is George Clooney's film debut and that would be my pick over this one any day. Class dismissed.
Robin Thompson, HMS
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