Monday, November 9, 2015

Film Review - Kristy (2014) - Spoilers

The recipe for Kristy. Take a decent premise; a network of killers target young women for ritual slaughter, calling each Kristy as a reference to Christ. Put a decent actress in the lead; Haley Bennett plays the Final Girl (well, only girl) Justine and is competent in an uninteresting role. Add some decent cinematography.

And then completely ruin any chance of making a watchable movie with a plot that is so implausible and a story so cliche ridden that I think screenwriter Anthony Jaswinski wanted to insult the intelligence of anyone watching the movie.

Justine is a college student staying alone on the campus of a university for Thanksgiving. She is the only student there, something that already stretches the bounds of credulity. While out on a provision run, she encounters Violet (Ashely Green), a member of a nation-wide cult that murders girls and posts the killings on-line. Justine is picked at random; but the killers seem to have a perfect knowledge of the campus, how to disable power and communications and her exact location. Jump scares, near misses and the inability to hide from four people on a large campus drag out the runtime until we get some Final Girl butt-kicking and the Justine's stalkers are killed. As credits roll, we learn that police are taking apart the cult. Justine gets the last word saying, "Justine is dead, I am now Kristy." An after credit sequence, however, indicates that Justine is killed by a cell of the cult. So, not so Final of a Girl after all.

It would be pointless to go through every flaw in the story, since there are so many of them. The most annoying are the inhuman competence of the killers and their ability to appear out of nowhere whenever it is dramatically convenient or it's time for a jump scare. However, those are just things that annoyed me the most; the script is full of hackneyed ideas and well-worn cliches. The story offers nothing original, has no engaging characters and thematically is hollow. The film is a waste of time.

Not Recommended.

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