Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Even if you make a crappy movie, you've still made a movie. It's on IMDb and good for you. It took a lot of effort to get your friends together. You have good friends. Frequently, though, you make an un-ironic version of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace with craptacular dialog likeMale victim: WHAT DO YOU WAAAAANT!? WHAT. DO. YOU. WAAAAAAAAANt Female victim: What does he want?Or procedural claptrap like:Detective: This is our only lead. I'm gonna need you to find out who this guy is, where he works and who he knows. Other Detective: I've already done it, sir. It's a game of tell not show where the script writer grinds the momentum to a halt by writing useless lines like "Meet me on the third floor of the parking garage." Because...why? There's a nice bit at the end explaining the reason behind the killings which gets squandered and blown to shite by...*****SPOILER******No ending whatsoever. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. The entire movie is a set up for a sequel. Seriously. The killer ambles to his car and drives off. Cut to the police detective telling his force that more people will die if he's not caught. The end. Roll credits. I'm all for breaking rules to do interesting things but this had no pretensions to be anything other than a genre horror picture. As such, your omnipotent, supposed-to-be-dead killer get the shite kicked out of him and appears to be dead. Then and ONLY then does he get to drive away. Otherwise you are cheating your viewers and/or whoring your next craptacular.

This is because the baddie wears a mask and similar clothes and likes to use a machete. Also, like Jason Vorhees and Michael Myers, he likes to vary the use of his weapons. The music has a John Carpenter type of score too, only less sophisticated.This is where the similarities pretty much stop. I would think anybody liking those films will find this one appealing, though it's a lot slower, has less victims and is obviously made with a smaller budget.The merits of the film which gained it a 6 from me is the style in which it was shot. The violence was not gratuitous, it all had a purpose and was not over the top like it could have been. If I had a complaint it would actually be the dynamics of the blood. The recovery speed from pain was too fast and not enough blood flowed from any of the wounds, something I found distracting. So we have restraint from gore but at the same time too much restraint to detract from reality. The acting from one person after being assaulted in a kitchen was terrible.Real head wounds always look worse than they are while the head wounds in this film look like little cause for concern.The script is OK, though the lead male character did quite a poor job delivering the bulk of it considering he would be reeling in pain. The using of the leads wife was not lost on me, it served to make the lead male understand his torturer much more than he would have. It is something which brings humanity to the masked man and it says a lot about the masked man's motive. I would have liked the use of flashbacks here but maybe budget constraints prevented it.It has an old school feel about it. Providing you bear in mind the whole time you are watching a low budget indie film and not looking out for Oscar winning performances, you will see the vote of 6 I awarded it was warranted and that a sequel would be welcoming to you like it is to me. There are some nice touches which place it above lower fare.