“All Girls Weekend is classic survival horror with subtle effects and beautiful imagery. It [All Girls Weekend] doesn’t fail at weaving together a fairly compelling story of Man versus Nature and the inevitable outcome.” ~ Creepercast
Synopsis: High school friends reunite after many years to spend a weekend in the mountains, but when everything goes wrong, there is no time for girl bonding. (IMDB) Written/Directed by Lou Simon (Agoraphobia, HazMat) and starring Jamie Bernadette, Gema Calero, Katie Carpenter et al.
All Girls Weekend is an unashamed low budget ode to ‘The Descent’. Here we have another collection of girls that have lost touch of their friendship for various reasons that are drawn to a trip into the woods by one who claims to know everything about hiking only to get them lost and in trouble. We have the classic bad girl, everyone else claims to have grown up but she still has the same old bad attitude and for some reason the rest are obsessed by her need to have a smoke. Then the new girl, accident prone but up for anything until it's wimpy time. Of course, there’s the rational everything is going to fine girl that knows all about the hike but still manages to lead them into danger. To round out the group there’s the peacekeeper and the somewhat lame comic relief. As the story unfolds the usual girly secrets come out, they get cut off from society and only have each other blame.
All Girls Weekend’s actors are stunted, the girls aren’t quite comfortable enough to pull off the best friends for years characters they are playing. The doesn’t mean the acting is over the top bad, they just don’t flow naturally thereby seeming detached from each other and waiting for director ques or trying to remember their lines. Some of the lines are very good though, Simon has provided some realist dialogue up to a point. That is to say, Simon is a thinker. One rule of survival horror is to eliminate technology. In today's world of a constant network of communication, cell phones get in the way of isolation. So like a good writer Simon takes them out of the equation, by rationalizing out loud that their cell batteries died looking for signal. All of them. The exposition sucks, but at least we don’t have to question the coincidence. Simon uses interesting edit techniques to show passage of time and avoid over exposing the effects to simple grotesquerie. The death scenes are subtle and body horror limited. Every element to a good survival horror film are here including a curse and the expected twists.
All Girls Weekend is classic survival horror with subtle effects and beautiful imagery. The protagonist and final girl are predictable. As is the ending. Yet, it doesn’t fail at weaving together a fairly compelling story of Man versus Nature and the inevitable outcome. A good homage to the films it pays tribute. If you can suspend disbelief long enough it will give you everything you expect.
Til next we bleed… Farewell from the beasts and I,
Jeff
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