This movie could have been good. There were a lot of elements within it that had promise, but unfortunately it lacked the direction and thus lost the story and my interest.

Death Trip follows four friends who go to one of their parents’ cottages for a weekend away. One of the friends ends up mutilated and the others have to find out what happened to her and immediately they become suspicious of the people around them.

It is told in the early scenes that one of the neighbours, the dad of the family, killed his wife and he has a daughter who the only male friend in this group likes to peep on at night which seemed like an interesting plot point but didn’t really go anywhere.

There seem to be a few moments in this movie like that. There was a whole supernatural element in this house where the supposed murder took place and this was very tense for me and quite chilling, but it didn’t seem to add much to the overall story and almost felt like it should be part of a different movie.

Another moment that happened that I don’t think did much was the party scene. It just felt incredibly uncomfortable and didn’t add much to the overall storyline again. This scene seemed to just be filler and could’ve easily been cut, but I think that was part of the issue of this film, the story that had been put together just wasn’t long enough for the runtime that was needed and so these moments were added in just to pad it out and the movie could’ve easily done without it.

That’s my biggest gripe with this movie was the actual main event happened over an hour into it, so for the first hour nothing really happened to move the story along and then the last 40 minutes of the film seemed to drag with the amount of exposition and big moments that needed to happen to wrap it all up.

The gore of this movie was one of its highlights. It was very well done and did have me cringing. But the actual way the characters interacted with each other, especially in the last half hour, and how the fight scenes between them and the way in which these were shot it seemed to lose the excitement of the piece and the way it was done almost came across as comedic.

The bad guy of the film going after these characters didn’t seem to die or it was very hard to make him die and so he just kept going which meant the other characters kept going. There were lots of moments where, watching it as an ordinary person, I thought if I was in that character’s situation where she is being hunted down by this guy, wouldn’t she be screaming? Wouldn’t she be calling for help instead of being silent and almost just letting it happen?

This movie could’ve had promise. The premise that was sent to me sounded very intriguing and if it was the first scenes with the group going to the cottage and then the final scenes of the fight it could’ve been really interesting, but the middle part of this movie was what made it fall apart for me. It just left me with a lot of unanswered questions and that was really frustrating because if we had those pieces put together then the whole story could’ve been told so well.

We never really get to understand why the person who’s going after this group is going after them. We never understand what their motive is, what their reasoning for this is. If you are able to delve into that a bit more: maybe the trauma of the husband killing his wife could’ve caused it, maybe the fact that there’s been an on and off relationship happening in this group that could’ve set it off, anything like that would’ve been interesting to delve into and to understand more. I feel the same with the house party that really did nothing for the storyline, it could’ve actually been used to put together some plot points to really understand the attacker’s psyche and why they’re doing what they’re doing.

This movie had promise but I feel it was three movies squished into one. You had the supernatural element of the family murder, you had the awkwardness of the house party which was a better fit for a teen drama than a horror, and then you had the final thrilling moments and the core exposition of what was actually happening. If the movie just stuck to those final 30 minutes and managed to flesh that out into an hour and a half long movie then I think it could’ve been good. But unfortunately for me it just fell flat and it’s not a movie I would recommend.

What do you think of Death Trip?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding