Don't Go To the Reunion

Don't Go to the Reunion is the latest from Slasher Studios, the brilliant horror minds behind the short films Teddy, Popularity Killer, and Blood Brothers, which you might remember I was quite fond of. Reunion bucks their trend, and comes in at a feature run time of 75 minutes. When I first read about it, I'll admit to being a bit worried about it being 20 minutes of entertainment, needlessly stretched out and loaded with unnecessary filler. Thankfully, writer Kevin Sommerfield and Steve Goltz managed to overstep that potential land mine, and crafted what turned out to be an entertaining, genuinely funny at times, homage to 80's high school slashers from the good old days.

Thankfully, the plot isn't needlessly convoluted. Reunion knows what kind of movie it is, and plays to those strengths. You take a group of popular kids, you insert an awkward, weird, loner kid who the popular kids play a terrible prank on because one of said popular kids stands to benefit from weird kids misery. Fast forward 10 years, and on the night of an impromptu reunion, the popular kids start getting offed one by one, seemingly at the hands of the unpopular weirdo, back for his revenge. Or is he?!

Reunion obviously gets it's inspiration from movies such as Slaughter High, Prom Night, and even newer stuff like Scream. The plot is thin, the characters are cliche, the dialog is hilarious at times, in short, if you saw a horror movie in the 80's, you'll feel right at home here. In fact, without giving too much away, even the kills themselves are little nods to other classic horror films. The acting ranges from decent to awful, with Slasher Studios regulars Mike Goltz, Matty Dorschner, Hannah Herdt, and writer Kevin Sommerfield himself, turning in the strongest performances.

I sat down to watch Don't Go to the Reunion with skeptical optimism. I knew I loved the Slasher Studios short films, but I wasn't sure how a full length movie was going to turn out. I can honestly say that I was entertained for the full 75 minutes. It wasn't the most original thing I've ever seen, but that's ok sometimes. In fact it's the twist at the end, when it tried to change things up a bit, that I took the most issue with. It was a minor nitpick, but I wasn't crazy about the ending. Everything up until then though, surpassed all my expectations for it.

Big thanks to Keving Sommerfield and Slasher Studios for allowing me to check out Don't Go to the Reunion. I had a blast watching it, and look forward to future projects from them.