Central Park (2017)
Starring Justiin A. Davis, Ruby Modine, Malika Samuel
Directed by Justin Reinsilber
Using the historic Central Park in New York City certainly added a nice touch to director Justin Reinsilber’s slasher flick,…you guessed it: Central Park, although far too much formulaic instances left this one buried deep in the woods, and not a cell signal to be found, because you know in this day and age, people can’t find their own front doors without one. Let’s fasten up our turd-guards, cause this one’s gonna get messy.
Let’s see…about that repetitious blueprint for a slasher-flick…what do we need? Brain-dead, drugged-out, oversexed teens with a need to rebel? Got em. A sprawling canvas in which to effectively spray some crimson around in reckless fashion? Got it. A seemingly thin backstory that hopefully can sustain the weight of an otherwise paltry display? BOOM. Okay, so all of the pieces are in place, so let’s dine, shall we? The film’s main focus is Harold (Davis), who’s in a bit of a dismal stretch in his uniformed high-school days – you see, his dear old daddy is a financial scumbag who bilked a number of suckers out of millions of greenbacks, and the authorities have closed in like buzzards on a fresh kill. So Howard’s doltish high-school buds decide it’s for the better to shake him out of this depressing state by having a little drug-and booze-fueled fiesta in his honor inside of, you guessed it, Central Park at night.
We get the whole “story about a killer in the park” and it’s as safe and sanitary as one of those bathroom napkins, but hey, you need an effective psycho with an axe to grind, don’t you? Anyhoo, it’s not too long into the scaled-down celebration that our moronic lab-rats begin to get picked off in the most unspectacular of ways – seriously, gorehounds – you’ll be severely disappointed with the lack of crimson go-go juice hitting the lens in this one. Reinsilber does throw a pretty decent twist into the latter stages of this one, but at that point I’d honestly checked out for a short time, and chances are that the majority of you will too. Performances…what can I say about the performances here? Well, the optimal look was to have a bunch of douchey teens, and I’d say the cast-listing hit it out of the park on this one. Their motives are shallow, their actions are inane at times, and they are absolutely the most correct form of fodder for a killer’s attitude. Let’s just chalk this one up as one of those films that I’ll silently applaud, simply due to the notion that it was inspired by some of the greats of the past, but when you pull the skin back, all you see is the same old blood and guts, although there wasn’t much here to speak of. My advice for those wanting to check out this Park? Skip it and find another New York City landmark to take in for entertainment and enrichment purposes.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
