Slashers, 2001 - ★★★½

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I was in the mood for some obscure, cheap horror movie and I got this.

In this japanese game show called "Slashers", people are locked into a game show stage with 3 killers, whose only goal is to kill the contestants. If they survive they get lots of money. If they kill the killers, they get more money. If they all survive they have to split the pot, if only one survives, he/she gets all the money. This time, for the first time, there are 6 American contestants.

The acting is pretty good, especially for such a cheap movie. The characters are fun and a little stereotypical, but I think that's planned.
Because after being a fun movie with enough gore and a pretty interesting idea, it's also a satire of game shows and of the horror genre. It's not quite as in your face as, for example, Funny Games, where one character literally asks why you are watching it. This movie at least hides it and talks to a fake audience that watches that show in real life.

It also makes fun of horror tropes, like how the music works to show when the killer comes but it sometimes plays, even when there is nobody there.

So this movie is funny on a meta level, but it's also funny on a normal level through the characters. The 3 killers are so funny. They all have special personalities and wear masks. One girl changes her top 4 or 5 times because one killer always cuts it open. Because the Killers don't just kill everyone, they are there to make the show interesting.

I could go on forever about the story, I really enjoyed it but I'm going to stop that right here to go over some technical stuff.

The gore is really well made for a low budget movie of 2001, of course most of the time you can tell how it's done but it looked great.

Another thing that i really liked was that it was seemingly done in one shot. Of course there were like, thousands of cuts, but they were all hidden. Not as good as in Birdman, but they tried. Most of the time the lights go out (because it's all in a big room that is lighted). This is of course done because the whole "game show" is filmed with one camera, and the camera guy is also a character who sometimes is funny, too.

All in all even though I watched it in a bad German dub I had a fun time watching it and if you are a horror fan you should give it a try. No masterpiece by far but well worth your time. 3.5 out of 5 stars.