I I was kindly sent this film as a screener and if you know me you know I love a good slasher horror, and so I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into this film.

Pillow Party Massacre follows a group of friends who on April Fools Day decides to prank one of the group. They use her boyfriend to get her into a compromising position to then reveal her to everyone that is at the party, and while usually these jokes go down quite well in the friendship group, this particular girl takes it to heart and ends up killing her boyfriend.

Of course the girl is taken away from the group and we rejoin the group of friends later on after all this has happened where they decide to go to an isolated cabin in the woods, as you would expect from a slasher film, to spend some time together. But things take a turn for the worst when they get an alert saying a convict has escaped prison and slowly their friends start to turn up dead.

Going back to the first scene I did think this was going to be the massacre, seeing this school girl holding a gun to her boyfriend’s head was absolutely terrifying and crazy and I thought maybe it would move away from the old knife crime we’ve seen in earlier slashers and head towards a more gun heavy story line. However this isn’t the case so if gun violence is something that you find quite hard to watch don’t worry, past the first scene guns aren’t really a thing until the twist at the end.

Jumping to the end with the twist, I won’t reveal it here, but it was not something that I expected to happen. Of course you can see all the red herrings that are happening throughout this film where it could be the escaped convict going after them or the vexed friend who still wants to enact revenge, but when you find out who the big baddy in this film actually is it totally took me off guard but was very reminiscent of other slasher horrors.

And that’s what I loved about this film was it evoked that feeling of ’80s horror so well. Yes some of the gore was CGI and that did pull me out of the effect somewhat but a lot of it was practical and it was very fun to see these characters writhing around in pain and having that practical effect being used. There was one scene where one of the girls early on gets a knife to the back of her head and it goes through her eyeball and it is so well done that it did make me cringe because it seemed so realistic.

So if you love a good 80s horror with the usual tropes that you’d expect then this is for you. It’s not terrifying but it does have some very interesting moments and the gore is really well done when it is done practically. I especially love the twist because while it made complete sense in the storyline it was not something that I saw coming and definitely took me by surprise.

What do you think of Pillow Party Massacre?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

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