What is Stage Fright? The movie that is, not the fear of performing in front of a crowd. Is it a musical? Is it a horror? Is it a comedy? Well my friends, in fact it’s a mash-up of all three. The film is writer/director Jerome Sable’s love letter to theater and horror all wrapped up into one ambitious feature film debut.
After their mom and rising star Kylie (Minnie Driver) is murdered at the opening night of her new musical, we fast forward 10 years where her daughter Camilla (Allie Macdonald) and son Buddy (Douglas Smith) find themselves working at a theater camp which is run by their mom’s producer and now their caretaker Roger McCall (Meat Loaf). Desperate to bring in a Broadway talent scout to view the failing camp’s big performance and get it back on its feet, McCall, along with his director, decide to have the students perform the same musical that Kylie starred in. Seeing this as her moment to follow in her mother’s footsteps, Camilla auditions for the play in hopes of living her dream and soon enough eerie things begin to happen. We soon discover that there is a killer living among the camp-goers and he really hates musicals. Cue Kabuki killer and blood.
Stage Fright is definitely unique, I’ll give it that, but outside of that uniqueness of the genre mash-up it doesn’t offer up much except some ridiculous antics and only a couple of good laughs. In fact, there’s a lot that ends up bothering you once you see through the shiny façade of the singing “teenagers.” For example, the killer in the film sings heavy metal and plays the electric guitar, the exact opposite style that the campers excel in. The thing is, every time this killer is shown he is simply hiding inside a walled area going crazy, smacking pictures of the campers he hates and doing nothing about it. It’s kind of creepy and not in a scary way, just a “hey, why are you creeping through a wall when you could simply step out of the darkness and kill these people easily?” The fact that he grabs a guitar while freaking out makes it even funnier and I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be or not. His motivation for hating these campers doesn’t become clear until the end but even then it just seems like a waste of a murderer.
To build off the above, while this is a slasher film, the slashing occurs immediately in the beginning and then nothing happens until the final act, leaving us with a bunch of teenage drama throughout most of the pic. You know, the typical camp stuff, love, sex, manipulation, obsession, theater kid politics and more BS. If you’re going to describe a film as “scream” meet “glee” at least make it feel a little bit more menacing, like the villain is actually a threat because, for a majority of the film, he doesn’t seem like one.
If you’re a fan of glee and horror then there is a slight chance you’ll like this film, but don’t get your hopes up. I thought the first musical number introducing the camp was great but after that the film went downhill. There is significant lack of good comedy, the jokes that were there didn’t work often and there were parts that were funny that I don’t think were supposed to be. Furthermore, there are a couple of loose ends that were never tied up, specifically what happens with Camilla and the guy that’s obsessed with her, Joel (Kent Nolan), his role felt all over the place, helpful, obsessive, threatening yet kind. He’s the only character that seemed to win me over yet was the only one whose fate we’re left to guess.
As a fan of late night cinema this one just didn’t cut it for me. Maybe it’s my lack of interest in musicals but I walked out of the film feeling a little bit cheated, like this wasn’t the movie I was hoping for when I heard the words killer, camp, and glee/musical in the plot. I don’t foresee this being the next great midnight event in the vein of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but I’m sure there is an audience, a small one, that will derive some pleasure from this film, it just won’t include me.
Rating: A disappointing slasher musical with significantly more emphasis on the glee-like performances than the killer that hilariously lurks in the background (3.5/10)
Stage Fright is set to hit theaters on May 9th from Magnet, the genre arm of Magnolia Pictures
Recent Comments