Well, when before I saw this film I really wasn't sure whether it would be my cup of tea...how wrong I was! I thought that this was one of the best films I've watched for a very long time, a real family classic. The story of a young evacuee and his new 'foster' dad, this film ticks all the boxes. I've not read the book (maybe that's a good thing & meant I enjoyed the film more) but with regards to the story, I really can't think of any bad points, hence scoring it 10 out of 10 (and I hardly ever think anything warrants top marks!). By the time William proclaimed 'I CAN RIDE MY BIKE, DAD!' I was sobbing my heart out (anyone who's seen it will understand, I'm sure). Really heartwarming, and definitely recommended.

While filming an 80's horror movie called 'Hot Blooded', the director is brutally murdered and the leading lady is scarred as she survives the attack and manages to kill murderer. After all of this, the production is abandoned and the stock reels are left to gather dust. So a group of filmmakers decide to pick up where the film left off even though they're warned by people to keep away from the film, as the last person who was interested in the flick turned up dead in the cinema while watching the film. From this it's labelled as a cursed production. Not taking these warnings seriously the crew goes ahead with the production and they get the original star of the movie to return from Hollywood to reprise her role, but not as the daughter but the mother. But again the murders start occurring with the cast and crew getting butchered by an unknown figure dressed up as the film's killer.
Look what 'Scream' started! Hey, I enjoy those films, but mostly everything else that followed on afterwards were annoying and pointless excuses. During this stage the sub-genre came back with vengeance, but it wasn't much of a good thing as they were mostly unsuccessful and unoriginal attempts, where they followed the derivative pattern of the Scream franchise. 'Cut' which is an independent Australian take on the textbook slasher genre is purely shonky garbage that lacks basically everything and shamelessly knocks off every other slasher flick. But you know what, I found it a cheesy delight. Yeah, It's gawd awful and highly forgettable, but it's a bit of ala good cheap fun while it lasted. Although I did hate it when I originally came across it, but the second time around I knew what I was getting myself into and it worked better for it. It was just like helping myself to a nice slice cheesecake again, but this time it wasn't so sweet.
The film came out around the same time as 'Scream 3' and 'Urban Legends: The Final Cut' did, which all three follow the same structure of using a movie within a movie. 'Scream 3' is obviously the strongest of the three, but I would actually watch this trash over Urban Legends: The Final Cut. Though, it did seem more of a throwback to the 80's slashers than that of one of Scream's bastard offspring. Pretty much the film is given b-grade treatment and that shows up in the script and performances. The dialog is truly unimaginative and hardly comes up with any surprises and suspense. While, the performances are pure mockery and Molly Ringwald takes the crown for it. She plays the wash-up actress returning to finish the cursed flick and I had good fun with her laughably ridiculous send-up performance. She provides the bite here and nails it down perfectly. The rest were mostly recognizable Australian TV stars (that's if you're an Australian) with a ravishing Jessica Napier leading the cast with the likes of Stephen Curry and Frank Roberts. Also pop singer (and supposed actress) Kylie Minogue makes a cameo appearance in the opening just to be hacked up! Nice. These teens mostly followed the formula of horny and dim-witted kids that have nothing better to do but to be killed. Sometimes it feels like they just waiting in queue, because they have no real substance to be there.
The plot starts off rather interestingly, then heads into a mystery phase where red herrings pop up, but then it makes a sudden u-turn where it becomes a somewhat satire on the horror genre. Simply it's rather choppy and when it comes to the explanation for all of this madness I was kind of left thinking oh my. This when it tries to twist back onto itself in a clever manner, but sadly it falls along way. But don't you just love an opening ending. Also it sports some pop culture references and a self referential, tongue-in-cheek approach. Predictability makes its way in rather early and the jokes can become over-stated at times, but it knows that by poking fun at itself quite a bit. The atmosphere looses a bit of edge because of the humour taking away the bleakness, but still the isolated grand old mansion where they are filming has some neat touches that added 'some' spookiness. The cinema scene is done rather nicely too.
Now, now we know we want gore and nudity when watching this type of flick, but sadly there's no nudity to be found and the gore is pretty standard, if lacking but it's more then decent for such low-budget flick. There are one or two creative deaths, but the rest are systematic. The killer wasn't bad but when he spoke it kind of hurt it I thought, well the smart-ass attitude didn't sit well with me. Another notes of the production which were dire ranged from the cut-away editing, out-of-place soundtrack and Kimble Rendall's direction lacked execution and was pretty careless, but these contributing factors pull together to add some sort of sheer entertainment to all of this badness.
The imagination matches the budget that's for sure, but heck this lousy slasher wasn't trying to be anything else. Pure schlock that's slightly amusing!