Parody at its apex.

Rating: 9/10 (20 June 2007)

A movie that so many people, including a reviewer on this very website, fail to properly comprehend or get, and one that I'm sure will be looked upon far more affectionately as the years pass. From beginning to end it's one huge tongue in cheek exploration into the conventions that follow and define the slasher movie genre. Never does it take itself as seriously as many of it's viewers do, and never does it lull you into taking it seriously as a plethora of overt clues (the big star death in the opening scene; the movie geek who predicts everything that happens before it actually does; the fumbling underdog who becomes an unlikely hero; the ridiculously overdrawn murder sequences etc) crop up throughout the film time and again just in case those pretentious little twits among us ever get the urge to place this alongside Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," or something as equally outrageous. The habitual camera winks the script and the performers give and encourage (Particularly the brilliant Matthew Lillard and Jamie Kennedy) are what sets this apart from many other feeble attempts within the genre and this arrogant form of film-making is probably what made many viewers misconstrue just what the film aims to do.
Yes, this movie could be considered horror ("slasher" is the ridiculous term more commonly abused), but to pigeonhole as such is to do one of the 90's greatest parodies/black comedies an immense disservice. If I could hyperbole for a second: not since Shakespeare have comedy and tragedy met in such a dynamic concoction; and rarely has a film captured the imagination of the its viewers so firmly that it's actual premise and concept have been completely ignored and misinterpreted to a point where it has been taken far more seriously than the writers, the director and or the script ever intended it to. That's the beauty of this most wonderful film. So clever it hurts. In fact, it was so good, it still, to this day, continues to be taken seriously. Magnificence personified.