Slaughtered (2009)

Slaughtered has quite an interesting story behind it. It was written, produced and directed by Kate Glover in her native Australia when she was just 22 years old. While Glover was in college, she worked at an isolated pub in an area where real-life serial killer Ivan Milat hid the bodies of his British backpacker victims. She was inspired to make a film after hearing this story and seeing a creepy razor-edged saw hanging in the cellar. After Glover held some fundraisers with the local drinkers at her bar along with selling bottles of blood red beer, she had enough to hire a cast and crew (most under 25 years old) to make her film!

The gory slasher, simply put, is about the employees and patrons of a bar being terrorized by a masked killer one night.

While it isn’t the most original or complex of stories, Slaughtered still delivers some solid scares and is an impressive effort considering what little experience filmmaker Glover had when she first started. For the most part the direction is clear and you can always see the action going on, even in darker scenes. The pub scenes are appropriately dingy and create a believable atmosphere of a true backwoods dive bar. Even when the film kicks into high gear and the action comes fast and fierce the direction is still crisp.

Surprisingly, the acting on this low budget flick is pretty decent. All of the actors do a great job and I enjoyed watching all of them. No cringe-worthy performances here! Plus, it also didn’t help that it was a very attractive cast, filled with both eye candy for girls as well as guys!

The gore in the film was quite impressive, again taking into consideration that this was a low budget film. Kills were gory and gruesome and the blood flowed thick and fast! The killer went around with a brutal looking saw and hacked people up left and right! As for the killer’s design, he looked downright menacing wearing a black hooded robe and a gruesome death mask.

My only complaint about the film is that it started to feel a bit generic and repetitive when the “final girl” figured out there was a killer on the loose. The story just didn’t try hard enough to differentiate itself from all the other slashers out there and needed a little something extra to be memorable. Not even the nicely done twist at the end could liven things up.

Nevertheless, Slaughtered was an impressive first effort from filmmaker Kate Glover, who should be proud of herself and her cast and crew for creating this film. Despite its flaws, it was still an entertaining slasher to watch and makes me look forward to what Glover does next. Word is that her production company Red Sparrow is prepping The Bone Orchard, set to be directed by the legendary John Landis.
For more info, visit Red Sparrow Productions’ Official Site!