Simon Says starts as couple Kate (Margo Harshman) & Riff (Artie Baxter) along with their friends Vicky (Carrie Finklea), Ashley (Kelly Vitz) & Zack (Greg Cipes) are headed towards the open forest wilderness for a weekend away from the stresses & strains of normal city life in their camper van. They stop off at a small town to ask for directions, they meet the retarded Simon (Crsipin Glover) & his cruel twin brother Stanley (Crispin Glover as well) but end up have a little altercation. The teenage friends load up & set off, they find a suitably isolated camp site & prepare for the fun ahead of them. However the trip soon turns into a nightmare as the ever so slightly deranged duo of Simon &/or Stanley begin to brutally murder them one-by-one...
Written & directed by William Dear I think this was intended as a throwback to the slasher films of the 70's & 80's, I am sort of in two minds about it to be honest. The script takes a little while to get going but doesn't seem to take itself too seriously & models itself on your typical Friday the 13th (1980) rip-off with a bunch of teens running around the woods being sliced & diced by some maniacal killer, in that respect it's predictable & unoriginal but I sort of felt the makers knew this & just decided to have a bit of fun with the genre & the clichés rather than try to change a tried, tested & popular formula. I mean if it ain't broke don't fix it, right? I must admit I'm a big fan of exploitative, gory mindless slasher flicks if they are done right & I have to say for the most part I throughly enjoyed Simon Says. However, the slasher flick is an extremely limited & crowed sub genre that has little scope for imagination & a fairly rigid plot structure which filmmakers can't do a lot with, I mean one slasher film is pretty much exactly the same as the next with some bland victims gathered together usually in some isolated location purely to be killed off. That's the main problem with Simon Says really, it's nothing new or original & if you don't like slasher films then Simon Says will do nothing to help change your opinion but if you do like a good slasher then in my opinion Simon Says is certainly one of the better efforts I've seen from recent times but when you compare it to crap like The Legend of Bloody Jack (2007) that isn't saying that much. The character's are OK, the dialogue is decent & the killer is suitably crazy although I don't understand who the woman on horseback was as it's never explained. Keep watching as the end credits roll as after they finish there is a few more seconds which answers a question or two you may have.
Director Dear does a fine job & Simon Says is much better looking than most recent shot on a camcorder type horror flicks that litter video shelves & turn up on obscure cable TV channels. There is also a very pleasing amount of gore although it takes about 35 minutes to kick in, lots of people are impaled on pick-axes, there's plenty of blood, severed limbs, mangled bodies, hangings, a fish is gutted, fingers are chopped off with a huge meat cleaver, there are burnt corpses & a cool scene where two paint-ballers are literally sliced to pieces by a huge spinning cylinder of spikes. My hat also goes off to the filmmakers for putting a scene in which show's the 'cute' little white poodle dog being stamped on & literally exploding! The special effects are very good with plenty of on set gore effects & fake blood rather than awful CGI computer effects which are thankfully kept to a minimum. Simon/Stanley also has a catapult type machine which fires pick-axes everywhere, I was thinking I wish I had one as I'd soon sort my a-hole neighbours out then! Having said that I bet it costs them a fortune in pick-axes...
With a supposed budget of about $3,000,000 this is really well made by what looks like professionals, the cinematography is nice & mercifully the makers decided to keep the annoying MTV type effects down so no shaky hand held crap! Simon Says actually looks rather nice, it has a few stylish scenes & is well made, it's surprising & nice to actually see a very recently made independent horror flick with good production values. The acting is alright if not spectacular but why are so many of the cast related? Robyn Lively is the son of Ernie Lively while Lori & Blake Lively are his daughter's, Max & Michael Moody are brother's, Adam, Bart & Brad Johnson are all brother's as well & I wouldn't be surprised if Leila Johnson is also related to them & Chad & Chris Cunningham are brother's.
Simon Says is a fun little well made slasher flick with some nice gore, it takes a while to get started but overall I rather enjoyed it. It passed 90 odd minutes harmlessly enough for me. If you don't like slasher flicks then avoid it like the plague but if you do like them then this is certainly one of the better ones I've seen from recent years.
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