REVIEW: SHREDDER

PLOT
A couple of friends break into an abandoned ski resort for a weekend of snowboarding and drinking. But when a killer in a ski suit shows up, killing the friends off, one by one, they now have to fight for their lifes to get out from the resort alive...

REVIEW
Shredder follows the same road as Wishcraft by getting released in the UK ages before it came to the US. Another thing the two films have in common is that they both look fairly high budget. Shredder manages to keep the suspense high all of the time and even if there aren't any really good chase scenes in this movie, we get one good ski chase in the opening scene. You would think that I would have been more surprised with how good this movie was, but I had actually read a lot about it before I watched it and was expecting it to be better than most other recent slashers.

Top notch camerawork by Greg Huson who also edited the not so good slasher Drive In (2000), well he sure made up for his previous mistake by giving us this brilliant slasher. The acting is also very good and the actors seem far more experienced than they really are, I was surprised that they hadn't been in very many movies before. Billy O'Sullivan, who we know from the very bad slasher Lover's Lane (1999), is outstanding in this movie while Scott Weinger gives us a less impressive performance, even though it's way above lowbudget slasher standards.

The killer was pretty predictable and the premise does spin off Iced (1988) quite a bit, but I don't see why that should ruin the movie for you, come on, it was about time that we got a new ski slasher. IMDB lists this as a Comedy / Horror, well, where's the comedy in this? This is nothing else but a superb horrormovie. But since it does have it flaws and doesn't feel too original, I will only give this 4 stars even if some of you might think that this did deserve 5.

GORE
There are actually two (!!) head dismember scenes, while one of them is more funny (in a guilty pleasure kind of way) than scary. We also get the very cool icecicle impaled through stomach kill and a slit throat. Then we get some other various less impressive gore aswell, like loads of blood splatter, a bloody shotgun shot in the shoulder, some knife or whatever in the head and an axe in the leg.

SOUNDTRACK
Very impressive, we get a very eerie and powerful string soundtrack and some cool hip rockmusic, Offspring style. Let's not forget about the sexy R'n'B music and the pop tune with a Jamaican reggae feel to it or the technopop played every once in a while, but quite silently.

BOTTOM LINE
This is one hell of a slasher, but if you're going to order this movie, I suggest that you buy the Brazilian DVD rather than the UK one as the UK one has like no extras beside a trailer, not to talk about the really lousy cover, the original artwork was much nicer! I have much faith in Showcase Entertainment after watching this movie, I only hope that they will make another slasher soon.

By AnthroFred
For SLASHERPOOL.COM