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Hell Fest

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A scene in Hell Fest. (Empire Entertainment)
A scene in Hell Fest. (Empire Entertainment)

WHAT IT'S ABOUT:

A masked serial killer turns a horror themed amusement park into his own personal playground, terrorising a group of friends while the rest of the patrons believe that it’s all part of the show.

WHAT WE THOUGHT:

Hell Fest is a bland appetiser in the lead up to Halloween. It overuses familiar tropes of the slasher horror genre and doesn't bring anything original to the table. 

The movie starts off with a prelude in which an unsuspecting girl is murdered by a masked killer, the only thing he can be identified by are his boots and an ominous tune he hums.

Fast forward to a year later and we meet Natalie (Amy Forsyth) arriving at her bestie Brooke’s (Reign Edwards) place. The girls haven’t seen each other for a while so this weekend is somewhat of a reunion. And what better way to get quality friend time than to visit a travelling horror theme park. 

They head out for a scary night with four other friends. Once there, things start out fun until our same masked killer shows up. There he terrorises the group and starts killing them off one by one…

Hell Fest has a cool setting; what better place for a psycho killer to prey on victims than a horror theme park on Halloween.

But that’s as far as interesting went for me. The film taps into every cliché of the slasher horror genre: Multiple stabbings with various blades, a syringe in the eye and a mallet to the head – the deaths are gruesome. 

I know that no one expects much of a storyline from something like this but could the writers at least have attempted something?

What frustrated me the most is that the killer didn’t have any motive. I just wanted to know why he was doing all of this?

When it comes to the acting there isn’t much I can say – the actors do OK, I guess. You don’t really get to know them so there’s really no emotional connection to their survival. I was particularly happy with one of the deaths.

The scariest thing about this movie is that the ending sets itself up for a sequel.


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