Return to Horror High

HALLOWEEN NIGHT

Here we have the final push for YVIAHMMAOIHTNQ, a marathon of four movies on Halloween night, climaxing with the original Halloween because, well, I mean that should be pretty obvious.

I'll give this movie a little credit for being ahead of its time. It sorta did what Scream did, only ten years earlier, in that it tries to satirize slasher movies in a self-referential way while being a genuine slasher film at the same time. It doesn't do it very well, and unlike Scream it's just not a good movie, but at least it was doing something different for the time.

The main problem is that it's just not very funny or clever, but it ceaselessly tries to be. The plot spins around and around, there are constant movie-within-a-movie sequences and it-was-all-just-a-dream fakeouts, it tries to point out its own cliches, etc, while still trying to have some genuinely creepy and suspenseful moments. But since it's all so lightweight and tongue-in-cheek, you just don't really give a shit about what's happening.

Scream was a well-directed slasher film that subverted the genre by having jaded characters who had seen all the horror movies and knew all the cliches. Return to Horror High is a competently but unremarkably directed film where the filmmakers are jaded, not the characters, and maybe feel superior to the material.