[Death On Demand]
Plot:Concerns adventurer/ice climber Sean McIntyre, who savagely murdered his family and hung himself in the attic 20 years ago. The murders are an unwelcome and unspoken part of a town’s history until Richard, a savvy college student, convinces three couples to spend Halloween night in the house and solve the mystery during a live webcast. As they move through the abandoned house, they soon realize they are not alone, and the night becomes a fight for survival.

Cast:Krista Grotte, Jerry Broome, Josh Folan, Anne McDaniels, Jerry Baxtron Jr., Sara Christal, Elisabeth Jamison, Brandon Goins, Dan Falcone, Hilary Greer, Ralph Bernard, Terron Jones.

My Thoughts:Saves itself from falling out of favor.

Review:"Death On Demand" is an interesting little indie slasher film from director Adam Matalon. Unlike most slasher movies, which decide to stick to a safe script, doing alot of things already done, "DOD" takes a few risks, mixes those risks with some old school throwback overtones, and manages to come out of it all in pretty good shape. The film kicks off with a guy named Sean McIntyre (Broome) slaughtering his family at the dinner table. We're never told at the start what's wrong with the dude. We just know, base don the look on his face in the films opening scenes, that he's pretty close to doing something really horrible to his family. And when he finally does, it doesn't come as much of a shock. Although co-writer/director Matalon does his best to give the scene some heavy shock value by how quickly McIntyre jumps into action.

Many years later, a group of college kids decide to hold a webcast at the house where the mass slaughter occured, ala "dangertainment" in "Halloween:Resurrection". Mistake number 1:Never hold a webcast on supposedly haunted killing grounds. To make the webcast more appealing, and intriguing to potential subscribers, the genius college students come up with an idea to hold a seance there, to drum up the spirit of McIntyre. Mistake number 2:Never call up the dead with a spirit board! See where I'm going with this? The diverse cast of characters occupying the house range from black, white, to sexually challegend, to porn stars, to good girls, to bad girls, to lesbians.

Probably one of the most diverse character casts I've seen in awhile. Of course they're all also primed and ready to buy the farm once the seance is completed. It's pretty easy to get annoyed with "Death On Demand" early on. The film starts out of the gate like "American Pie" meets "Night Of The Demons". The characters are extremely annoying, and the usual sexually influenced jokes, gags, and banter are all over the place. Within the first act, my first thought was...this is gonna be another one of "those" movies.

A film where everything is intolerable, the characters and the premise are dumb, and you basically just wish you never put it in the DVD player to begin with. But oddly enough, "Death On Demand" manages to settle in nicely, and around the beginning of act 2...it starts to level off a bit before McIntyre pops up straight from hell to wreak a little havoc on the unsuspecting, yet intellectually-challenged (they called up the spirit of a mass-murderer for cripes sake) - college students. McIntyre uses ice climbing equipment as his instruments of death, a pretty unique way to go for a serial killer. Especially in todays slasher universe where it's all about the knife or the ax, and pretty much nothing else.

The problem with the films killer however is that he simply doesn't wreak enough havoc. McIntrye as a murderer seems in this film, to have been alot deadlier when he was alive, as oppose to the returned spirit of the man. You'd think he'd be extra pissed that these kids just woke him up for their own amusement, but instead he doesn't really make it a point to kill them. Instead...he kind of waits them out until late in act three, where he decides to butcher them all in quick-hitter fashion. Before that, he takes out two people max...including one girl who's handcuffed to a bed. It's not like she had a choice and all, considering she was cuffed to a frikkin bed post!

I just didn't think he was aggressive enough, and it was really weird how he seemed to be more aggressive towards killing his own family rather than these annoying college kids. The films third act does deliver some good moments though, the intensity of the situation picks up really nicely, and the bodies begind dropping quicker and more frequently. And as usual the kids, all but for one or two are totally outmatched and for the most part, easy pickings for "Mac" when he ups the antie on things. The deaths remain standard though, similar to what takes place earlier in the film.

For a guy using ice-climbing equipment to slaughter his victims, McIntyre seems to prefer impaling his victims through the stomach in typical and cliche slasher film fashion. It would've been nice to see him get creative with the tools that he had, but maybe budget restraints for this indie horror-slasher prevented that. I have to admit though, despite it's poorly done pacing, the films final scene was a pleasant surprise. I didn't expect the movie to conclude in it's final moments the way that it did. And while it avoids the A-typical slasher film ending, you really have to question how it was written and played out.

It's played out so unbelievably slow that you at some point can see it coming before it comes. And that really kills most of what is supposed to be a shock and twist ending. "Death On Demand" will provide tons of entertainment to the 14 to 20 crowd with it's juvenile humor and eye candy, but for the 18-30 crowd, it'll be an up and down ride. When it's up...it's really up, but when it's down....it's really down.

Positives:Unique spin on the killer, eye candy for the guys, semi-likeable final scene.

Negatives:Too much juvenile humor, alot of annoying characters, some fatal flaws within the films final scene, no original kills by the killer, nor was he aggressive enough.

Overall:Two stars.





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