AllMovie

A lean and mean frightener that attempts to make up for the fact that it's nothing horror hounds haven't seen countless times before by keeping the pace fast and the heads rolling, Slaughter Night is surprisingly effective considering it's passable unoriginality. Forgiving viewers will likely walk away feeling that this ambitious stalk-and-slash effort is filled with just enough demonic scares and sloppy decapitations to make the brisk ninety-minute running time relatively pain free (with the notable exception of some seriously epileptic camera work - which thankfully doesn't descend into grand mal territory until the final act). Essentially, Night of the Demons in an abandoned mine shaft, Slaughter Night replaces that film's knowing sense of humor with a slick dash of highly-polished style. It's all very familiar and fairly predictable, but on the same token it's just efficient and flashy enough to place it apart from the lamentable and seemingly endless glut of no-budget, straight-to-video slashers constantly flooding the market. A heartfelt word of advice to Sl8n8 director Frank van Geloven: please have your DP hold the damn camera steady! Shaky cinematography does not a good horror movie make; not only does it diminish the viewers' faith in the competence of the director, but it consistently undercuts the tension by forcing them try and focus on what is actually happening rather than losing themselves to the terror of the situation as well. It worked for The Blair Witch Project because it was supposedly shot on consumer-grade video cameras by the folks who were brutally beset by a murderous forest hag, it doesn't work for Sl8n8 because it's a traditional narrative feature presumably shot on professional-grade equipment - the blending of the two elements simply bogs down a film which, with a little more attention to detail, may have been able to truly transcend its well-worn roots.