No one told me Monster Party was a surprise party...
Relax, not everyone fucking dies, but a lot of people do. Majority of this film takes place inside the house with our heroes, Casper, Iris and Dodge, whose names most certainly sound like that of a Saturday morning cartoon, up against the reformed serial killers. The Dawsons consisting of, suburban mother Roxanne, creepy chip eating father Patrick, cute daughter Alexis and weird son with a dangly earing Elliot. Along with their dinner guests who are 2 Jersey Shore style bros, El Mariachi from the Desperado movies, Lance Reddick and some random woman in a yellow dress. I love when movies assemble this weird collection of crazy people as villains, especially when they give each of them a little bit of screen time to allow the character to breathe. Action movies, like my favorites Mean Guns and Smoking Aces do a good job of this, although a collection of unique psychos is rare in horror. Even horror movies with families have only 3-5 psychos, this movie has 9 complete and fully developed psychos. I’m a big fan of the writing in this movie, its difficult to write 12 great characters and it’s even more difficult to write them off in unique ways.
Surprise! Face ripping gore!
Seriously, face ripping gore. This movie is gore heavy and the use of practical effects is great to see in this CGI heavy world we live in. When the brutality of this movie turns on, it doesn’t turn off and the gore seems to escalate with every unexpected death. There is the face ripping, a disembowelment, a scalping, a melon splitting, a leg amputation, a meat cleavering, a face smashing and my favorite death of the whole movie, a face eating that completely caught me off guard and cemented my love for this movie. A rare movie to make me say, “Oh fuck, I didn’t see that coming”.
Monster Party gets a 4.5 out 5 stars. Nothing you expect to happen does. Even the overall premise of the movie makes it seem like some sort of horror comedy, but it’s very serious. And honestly, how can you not love a movie that has its own theme song. An overall outstanding movie that made me stand up and applaud when the credits rolled. You really gotta give a hand to Shudder for continually releasing such good content.
Directed by Chris von Hoffmann, you can watch Monster Party now on Shudder.com.
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