slashers

The growing popularity of escape rooms, extreme haunted houses and their kin have lead inevitably to filmmakers working the concept into the cinematic playground. It's not a bad idea by any means, but the thrills these attractions offer potentially do not translate to an audience unless the mystery too engages them in a coherent manner. Ruin Me offers up the potential to do all of those things but too often twists its way out of sync before unraveling completely.

With the golden age of the 80's slasher no longer visible in the rear-view, the closest thing we can come to reliving them (apart from dusting off old DVD's or buying restored blu-ray releases) is checking out new interpretations from a modern perspective. The Ranger takes a shot as a hybrid 80's slasher if the killer's childhood hero was Smokey the Bear. In the process, director Jenn Wexler doesn't reinvent the wheel, but seems to be on to something with her deranged park ranger with an axe to grind attitude against those who don't respect the park he's sworn to protect. 

Even those of us a few years removed from our college days no doubt remember the stress of finals week. Those late nights spent staring bleary-eyed into a textbook on a subject far removed from our majors yet essential, from a bureaucratic perspective, to our futures just the same. Tensions were high during those dying days of the semester, and it’s there that Final Exam resides, a slasher more concerned with academics and social circles than actual slashing. Other films, from all genres, have played in this space, but few have done so with such a stunning lack of, well, anything.

Horror filmmakers have a unique opportunity. Wtih several subgenres at their disposal they have the option to morph any franchise into a completely different experience. However, it can be tricky for a well-established series to step outside of its norm and explore a different area of horror. With risk can come great reward, though, and Johannes Roberts' sequel to 2008's The Strangers is a clear-cut deviation from the home invasion subgenre that introduced us to the three masked psychopaths.