Death Stop Holocaust (2009)

Directed by: Justin Russell

Writer: Justin Russell

Justin Russell's The Sleeper was a somewhat surprisingly interesting retro sorority slasher, one that I found worthy enough to keep an eye out for the director's other offerings. Death Stop Holocaust is his earlier movie and, like The Sleeper, a nostalgia piece that this time attempts to recreate the look and feel of the 1970's grindhouse films. It's almost completely style-over-substance and, while it's very successful in the audio-visual domain, it fails the most basic movie test ever, and that is the ability not to induce boredom.

 

I was extremely happy when I noticed Jenna Fournier in one of the lead roles. Her part in The Sleeper wasn't big, but she was my favourite character in the movie, not to mention that she's the cutest young actress I've seen probably since Liv Tyler in Stealing Beauty. In this movie, she and her friend Lisa Krenisky go to a remote island to have a nice peaceful vacation, which turns into... a nightmare of terror, no less. I wonder how much they pay the person who comes up with such original taglines.

 

Anyway, it doesn't take long for the two girls to fall victims to a gang of brutal maniacs with scary animal masks that start to terrorize them for no apparent reason. To my endless disappointment, Jenna is killed very early and Lisa is left alone to play a cat-and-mouse game with the killers throughout the large chunk of the movie. If there's anything scarier than a silent killer wearing a pig mask, it's the disturbing fact that other people on the island seem to be in liaison with the killers. That and the scary Japanese long-haired ghosts. In fact, I would argue that the Japanese ghosts are even scarier, but that's beside the point.

 

The main problem (which Justin successfully solved in The Sleeper by introducing dozens of characters) is that the attackers are very soon left with a single helpless female victim. Obviously they can't kill her because the movie would be over, so the only thing left for them is to act like a bunch of complete retards and, instead of killing or torturing her, to simply let the girl go for no reason every time they capture her, which is often.

 

With any trace of story hopelessly gone, the movie soon turns into tedious and repetitive exercise for nerves where the only thing happening are Lisa's pointless nightmarish visions that serve no purpose except as another means of attack on the viewer's senses. All this is powered by Lisa's too literal understanding of the "scream queen" phrase. She screams and screams, and then screams again, and she's loud and while I have no objection to the logic of that (in that situation I would have been screaming, too) it's just so damn annoying. Many times I thought "Just off her already and let my ears take some rest!".

 

Even though the movie is brutal in places, it simply lacks the atmosphere and it's hard to feel sympathy for the main character, so I find The Sleeper a much better film. While it sucks for Death Stop Holocaust, it's good for Justin Russell, since it shows obvious improvement. He just needs to do one thing in his following movie and that is to give the lead role to the wonderful Jenna Fournier. It's a sure win.