Verdict
Summary
A clever enough concept undercooked and woefully underdeveloped by its filmmakers and incorrectly written characters, Killer Weekend might have worked great if Christopher Smith (Severance, Creep) had done it, but writer / director Ben Kent gives us unappealing characters, sloppy set-ups, and a payoff that comes quite abruptly.
Plot:
A groom-to-be and his buddies go on a paintball battle that turns horribly, and hilariously, wrong in KILLER WEEKEND.
Review:
Four friends since childhood – one of them who’s about to be married – go to a wooded wilderness to participate in a paintball zombie survival camp for Sam’s (Sean Verey) bachelor party. The guys are a bunch of nitwits and exist in a state of perpetual childhood, but at least one of them is trying to grow up. With Sam’s no fun father-in-law-to-be in tow, the stag party is already off to a rocky start, but when the simulated zombies (who are tired and bitter ex-soldiers) start coming at them in the first wave, Sam accidentally kills one by impaling him with a stick completely by accident. To make matters even worse, one of his friends finishes the job with a brutal knife chop to the skull, thinking that the whole thing is a simulation, but when they realize they’ve sort of committed a murder, they bury the body in the woods, leading to a series of terrible misadventures when the soldiers realize that Sam and his milquetoast pals have killed one of their own. The soldiers turn against Sam and his crew, forcing the idiots to fight back.
A clever enough concept undercooked and woefully underdeveloped by its filmmakers and incorrectly written characters, Killer Weekend might have worked great if Christopher Smith (Severance, Creep) had done it, but writer / director Ben Kent gives us unappealing characters, sloppy set-ups, and a payoff that comes quite abruptly. There were a few moments where I laughed out loud (when dad-in-law-to-be is forced to fight a soldier, I laughed hard), but Kent has a long way to go in the writing department to make a killer film out of Killer Weekend. Great concept, poor execution.
Dark Sky Films has just released Killer Weekend on DVD and digital. No special features are included.
