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Main Cast: Lucy Holt, Amy Shiels
Director: Stewart Hopewell
Each year there are movies produced that are never seen by the public. Their content is considered too graphic, too disturbing, too shocking for general audiences. This is one of those films.
I’ll give SLAUGHTER credit for definitely bringing the graphic. Disturbing or shocking? I don’t know. Maybe in the 80s or 90s. Probably not so much anymore.
SLAUGHTER tells the story of Faith (Amy Shiels), a woman just escaping from an abusive relationship, who is relocating to Atlanta. She and her friend Cathy celebrate by going out one night, and that’s where Faith spies Lola (Lucy Holt), a woman who looks to be in a similar situation, stuck with an abusive boyfriend. Faith pretends to know Lola and drags her away from her date. The two share a drink and Lola leaves her phone number as an IOU.
The two strike up a quick friendship and Lola invites Faith to come stay with her on her family farm, help out, and save some money on bills in the process. When Faith discovers her abusive ex, Jimmy, has found out where she lives, she quickly accepts the offer.
Things are going pretty well for a day or two. Faith is feeling secure finally. She’s enjoying Lola’s company. Then she begins to suspect Lola may just have more problems than even Faith does. Things around the family farm are also not sitting too well with Faith. Sensing something is wrong around the place, Faith comes up with a plan to take Lola away, the sooner the better. Things do not go as planned.
SLAUGHTER is an anonymous movie, for the most part. It’s slow to take off, meanders around aimlessly a bit, and never really reaches a point until the last third of its 96-minute runtime. I think it makes quite an impact in the end, but so much of what happens leading up to those final moments just feels like writer/director Stewart Hopewell (whose credits in the industry range from production designer to sound department and visual effects, but this is the first full-length movie he wrote and directed) had a final image in mind with some very vague notion of the story he wanted to tell, and was just writing to fill space and time until he could work up to the last scene. Unfortunately, I’m very familiar with that process.
There’s lots of mystery, none of which is actually a mystery, because we know right away–from the opening scene, in fact–that there’s murder happening on the family farm. We don’t know the details of the killings, who specifically is doing the murdering, nor why, but we still know more than Faith, and that just makes her naively bumbling around all the more frustrating.
And then, in the final act, when things are finally coming out and moving forward, it still all feels padded, like it should have ended a good fifteen minutes earlier but for the unnecessary complications Hopewell threw in there to stretch it out.
I know all this probably sounds like I didn’t like SLAUGHTER, but I really did. It wasn’t great by any means. But it worked for what it was, and never felt like a complete waste of time. And for a change, the ending WORKED. In fact, the ending, the last five minutes, were probably the strongest five minutes of the entire movie. For me, it’s usually the end that ruins everything that came before (I’m looking at you, BOOGEYMAN!), so for SLAUGHTER to end on such a strong note was great.
Also, plot and pacing aside, the STORY is a good one. The motivations of all the characters were fully realized and expressed.
The acting was strong, even if Holt overdid the southern accent a bit at times. SLAUGHTER has the makings of a good movie, I just think it needed a bit more direction, a little less reliance on establishing this mystery that’s anything but, and it needed to get to the point just a bit sooner. But overall, I think it worked pretty well.
SLAUGHTER is one of those movies that doesn’t make a big splash, comes and goes under the radar, and it’s only afterward when you’re contemplating what you just saw that you realize it all worked better in retrospect than it did in the moment. For me it’s those last few minutes that make everything else leading up to it worthwhile. It’s not a perfect movie, but it ends on such a memorable note that I can safely say it’s worth a rental.
Read more 8 Films to Die For reviews
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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