Hell Fest has your standard slasher movie set-up: three couples go on a triple date (two of the couples have been together for ages, one is still at the courting stage) and on that date, they are mercilessly picked off by a silent, hulking villain.
What pushes Hell Fest towards greatness is the setting. The titular Hell Fest is one of those horror-themed mazes where people walk around amidst actors dressed as monsters, killer clowns, and psychopaths who jump out and scare them every opportunity they get.
Mazes
The design on Hell Fest is fantastic. The setting of the mazes, based on numerous real-life places like Auckland’s Spookers, is inspired and it allows the designers to go wild creating sets full of dark imagery and places for monsters to hide.
It also has the bonus of being the perfect place for a killer to hide as every character is either walking around terrified and waiting to be scared, or out doing the scaring. It’s an easy hunting ground for a killer wearing just a strange mask and a hoodie.
Victims
The six main characters are, for this kind of movie, very realistically fleshed out. There isn’t huge backstory for any of them, but they are like-able and feel a bit lived in. They are also a group of people who feel like friends and couples. There isn’t that thing where a slasher movie presents you with six wildly diverse character types and expects you to believe they’ve been friends since kindergarten.
The downside to this was I found all the characters like-able enough that I didn’t want to see any of them get killed, which is probably the exact opposite attitude to go into a movie like this, which – spoilers – will definitely involve some or all of them getting killed off before the credits roll.
Killer
The main problem with Hell Fest is that unfortunately, the killer himself is not that inspired. I don’t necessarily want huge motivations from the silent, stalking murderer, but with Hell Fest, the killer was so devoid of personality, it became quite boring.
Consider Michael Myers in the original Halloween. He is another character who never speaks and simply stalks his prey, but when Michael isn’t on screen, you’re worried where he is. With Hell Fest, when the killer wasn’t there, I tended to forget him and focus on how cool the Hell Fest attraction was.
I guess the lesson here is not to make your setting more interesting than your villain or to find a better way to integrate him into that setting as the two ideas never quite coalesce. This might be a spoiler, but the murderer’s only real connection to Hell Fest is that it is a prime stalking ground to disappear into. I feel as though if you’ve got this rich, lively setting which is run by horror royalty, Tony Todd, it would make sense to find a way to connect it to the villain in some way.
Final Thoughts – Hell Fest
It is a shame when a movie like this is let down by the very reason for its existence. A slasher movie is only as strong as its slasher and the fear that slasher creates. With Hell Fest the setting is incredible, the characters are likeable and fun, but the killer (and some of the pacing) lets the whole thing down so it never quite soars to the heights of a movie like Halloween or Scream.
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