Killer Book Club

Netflix's Spanish variation on Scream is unfortunately a weak take on slashers. The basic proprerties are admittedly there. We have eight friends who are into horror movies (too bad they didn't at least make a play on a familiar cliché with references to older horror films), but they are interchangeable with other students who want to scare a teacher for harassing a student, only for the stupid prank to turn into a tragedy for which they will subsequently be punished. I liked the fairly original clown mask and the interesting murder weapon, the killer game works relatively well, and thankfully this is not PG-13, but even so we don't get any gore (there is some blood and the murders are at least OK, but they are not playful, inventive or brutal enough to make the film stand out from the long line of similar films). Of course, no one shows boobs (the 80s were golden in this respect), the humour is absent, the characters are unlikable and the whole thing is so unfunny. The craftsmanship is OK, so those who like these simple slashers can survive, but otherwise it’s a redundant film that brings nothing new, and does not excel on any level. 4/10. (08/27/2023)

Why do some people feel the need to keep making the same thing over and over again without a shred of imagination or any effort to bring something new to the table? Really, there's literally not a single thing here that's worthwhile and that breaks out of the classic template. The characters are a bunch of uninteresting people, the I Know What You Did Last Summer theme is old and tired, this whole boilerplate plot is getting on my nerves, from the very opening to the "resolution" of the situation by the characters to all the chases by the killer in the library, whereupon another main character comes in and the killer's mask falls out of his pocket with the words "it's not mine, I found it", which of course no one believes, and they banish him, only to find out it really wasn't him. Simply the same fairy tale over and over again. Except here we got no juicy gore, no story, no characters, nothing at all. Plus points for the classic desire to find out who the killer is and for the decent killings, which certainly won’t please the savvy eye in the slightest, but at least they're not cheap, second-rate blood splatters. Otherwise, though, it's a waste of time, and Netflix has once again come out with a total crap that just pissed me off for an evening like this. Thanks. (08/25/2023)