Truly Dreadful Film

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

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.

Jeremy Saulnier is one of my favorite directors right now, his two most recent films (Green Room & Blue Ruin) are two of the best movies I have seen in the last five years or so. I originally saw Murder Party years ago when it first came out but I was too young to fully appreciate it and didn't really have too many memories of it, once I realized that Murder Party was in fact Saulnier's directorial debut I knew I had to go back and check it out again.The film centers around a lonely young man (Chris Hawley) who lives alone and has no real plans for Halloween other than sitting at home with his cat watching horror movies. On his way home from the video store he stumbles upon an invitation to a "Murder Party", Chris assumes that this is just an invitation to a normal Halloween party and decides to put on a homemade Halloween costume & attend the party. Upon arriving Chris quickly realizes that the party is anything but normal, instead it is actually a project set up by an art collective made up of some very pretentious artists. Their plan is to murder Chris simply for the sake of art, and everything just spirals from there. I love the plot of this movie and the overall comedic tone of it as well, the film never takes it's self too seriously and they do an excellent job of mocking the art scene. I was very pleased with the way the characters were all written, I loved how calm and casual they all were through all the insane events that transpired throughout the film.The acting was all top notch for a low budget flick, especially Macon Blaire's performance (who has been featured in all of Saulnier's films so far). It's very rare that horror comedies are able to be genuinely funny but "Murder Party" really succeeds in that sense, it never felt like the comedy was forced or anything which made the jokes really land for me. One of the things I really like about Jeremy Saulnier's films is how brutal and violent they are, and "Murder Party" definitely doe not disappoint there. There is a massive amount of gore and brutal murders (hence the name), even during these scenes though the film still manages to be hilarious and make you grin. "Murder Party" really delivers on multiple fronts, it's violent, hilarious, bizarre, and at times super witty. If you want to laugh and you are not afraid of a little blood then I highly suggest checking this out, it's a blast.

I had been promised a 'spoofy', gory parody. It was just really boring all the freaking time. It didn't make me laugh, once. This was supposed to be a comedy, right?I had the misfortune of being recommended to watch this atrocity last Halloween, so I did. I sat through the whole thing feeling unclean the whole way through. It was very unpleasant to look at, not in a dark or creepy kind of way like in movies such as The Omen (1976) or The Fly, both of which are great and disturbing.The main character was a bore, just someone leading a quiet life and then put into a strange situation. But unlike following him through a journey like in something such as God Bless America (2011) and understanding him going psychotic, we just watch him witness the horrors that unfold throughout the night. The other characters I barely remember. I guess they just start murdering each other and we're supposed to root for certain ones, but you won't care because they're all equally annoying throughout. So when they get killed off in (I must admit) some well thought out fashion, you will not have been invested enough in them to feel anything.The 'plot' is about as bland as they get; guy gets abducted and then watches his captors argue for a while trying to escape a couple times. Eventually everyone tries to kill each other, resulting in our main character facing off against one guy. Then he kills him; the end. I might have made a couple of mistakes in this synopsis, but whatever. It's not like there was that much of it to begin with.So to summarise in short; don't watch. In long; really don't watch this turd.

When i started to watch Murder Party, i was definitely expecting a pretty typical horror movie, since neither the plot, nor the poster would promise anything more. But as soon as Chris follows the invitation and we get to know our "bad guys", you begin to realize that this is really not your typical movie. First i'd like to praise the team behind the movie, because, even though you can see the low budget sometimes (mostly when we are outside), it really looks like a higher budget. The camera-work is fine and it never gets boring. Saulnier always seems to know when there would be a possible moment of boredom and so he levels up the tempo and gives us some action. The effects are pretty good too and never feel cheap. The other part i want to praise are the characters, which don't have too much depth, but never feel like cardboard. They all feel unique and have their own quirks. This also contains the acting, as they all are acted really well and everyone seems to have a great time doing his job. My favorites are the beautiful Lexi and Macon, which are both people that i'd like to be friends with (without the killing though^^).In short: A great movie for Halloween, which just is fun from the beginning to the end. Kudos to Saulnier for making such a great movie. I will be looking forward to his new movie Green Room.