[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Blood Fest (2018)

A bunch of character actors you will have seen elsewhere go to Halloween horror movie festival Blood Fest.

After the first twenty minutes i was loving this, the opening of the Blood Fest had me practically cheering but then it all goes downhill and ends up scraping the bottom of one convoluted Cabin in the Woods style barrel.

Almost twenty five years after first seeing Wes Craven's Scream the rules of surviving horror situations are becoming extremely derivative and very boring so the fact that characters constantly discuss the rules as a way of surviving had me groaning which was a pity because largely the characters were less irritating than most who populate films such as this. There are also nods to classic horror movies throughout, from ripping off scenes from the Saw sequels to more subtler references like an area of the festival called Hodderville.

The film has very good production values with enjoyably gruesome splatter FX and what seem to be hundreds of extras in addition to a sizable cast who more or less all get killed off. However the contrived ending is implausible in the extreme - yes, we are talking Stonehenge fragments in millions of kids Halloween masks type extreme - meaning the overall feeling is one of a laughable movie rather than one that made me laugh.