I have surely mentioned, at some point, that I missed one of the Horrorfests due to a proximity failure caused by its gradually shrinking sphere of influence. But I’ve finally found a way to correct that oversight, via a cleverly scheduled weekend of DVD watching. Not quite the same as a theatrical experience, sure, but quite a bit cheaper and probably more comfortable overall. And the first film of the festival did not disappoint!

Kill Theory starts off with one of the standard tropes of the slasher genre, a van full of teens on their way to, well, it doesn’t really matter where they’re going, does it? It only matters that the place will be high on dangerous empty spaces and short on other people. And the teens all have trope personalities, to boot. There’s the annoying fat kid who is single when everyone around him is paired off[1], there’s the girl who takes off her shirt, thus ensuring a first reel murder scene, there’s the couple who are having problems because neither of them brought everything to the table when they decided to pair off, and that fighting inevitably spills into everyone else’s good weekend. Well, I suppose the guy who came to make them all dead also affects the weekend’s mood?

That guy? Instead of just killing everyone, which would have been more than enough to satisfy me after the fifth horrorfest’s mostly lackluster series of plots, he actually improves on the entire concept of slashing a vanful of teens. See, he was a rock climber who had to cut the belaying line and watch his friends plummet to their doom, because the alternative was for him to die along with them. And now he needs to prove to his therapist and/or himself that he’s not an aberration, by getting these teens to kill each other to save the one of them who will remain; if not, he’ll just kill them all. So, on top of being the perfect palate cleanser to the weekend, it actually managed to provoke thoughts about morality in its absolute and situational forms, and you can’t ask for a whole lot more than that from any film in any genre.

[1] He’s neither in a wheelchair not even half as annoying as the guy in Chainsaw who created that particular trope. But nobody else ever should be, as some molds can’t be matched.