Pool Party Massacre (2016)
Vacuous, high maintenance valley girl Blair invites her four vacuous, high maintenance friends to a pool party on the day her parents leave for a European vacation. Unbeknownst to her, a hulking figure has just begun a killing spree two properties over, offing Blair's MILF neighbour as she lounges by her own pool (as well as dispatching her metalhead pool boy in equally brutal style). As Blair and her friends sit around their pool *****ing [I'll go out on a limb and guess SHH will auto-censor that but you know what I mean] about everything and everybody (including each other), the killer moves nearer, killing an old lady who is Blair's immediate neighbour even more spectacularly. From then on it's slasher-by-numbers as each of these total airheads gets butchered by an assortment of gardening/DIY implements.
Writer/director Drew Marvick is a fan of 80s slashers, and this is an affectionate genre homage and parody - especially of The Slumber Party Massacre. Although set in the present day, it evokes the 80s well, with retro computer graphics in the titles and a Carpenter-esque soundtrack, The girls represent your typical 80s cross-section of slasher-fodder, and the kills are executed in an efficient 'Michael Myers'-type fashion. A nice touch is that instead of a signature weapon, the killer returns to a tool shed after each kill and selects a fresh weapon for the next, giving us death by handsaw, claw-hammer, weed-wacker(?!), axe, pickaxe, chisel, machete, and - of course - a whopping great power-drill.
It suffers from an obvious (very) low budget, but the practical kill/blood/gore effects are pretty good in an 80s way, and always entertaining. A big downside is that all the girls (as well as two guys that turn up unexpectedly) are completely unlikeable. You need at least two characters you want to survive; one to make you go 'Aw, no!' when they don't, and a final girl to really root for as she draws a line and makes her stand. The closest thing to 'likeable' here is just slightly less objectionable than the others.
As for performances, none of the girls will ever win an Oscar (for most of them it's their only screen credit; the one that does actually have a filmography is a former Playboy 'Co-ed of the Month' (did not know that was a thing) turned 'adult movie' performer), but they score well in bikini-wearing and screaming.
A fun, nostalgic reminder of a simpler time (if you ever catch this on disc I recommend the 'making of' and gag reel. They obviously had a blast doing it). A fair amount of nudity. 6/10
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