The vogue for star ratings fixed to film reviews arrived after the heyday of exploitation movies, which is perhaps just as well because the whole point of such films is that they’re good and terrible at the same time.
Like Schrödinger’s cat in quantum physics – dead and alive simultaneously – they’re both five stars and one star. Or at least that’s how many cineastes saw slasher movies in the romping, anything-goes era of postmodernism 40 years ago, when Quentin Tarantino was gleefully slinging work by Dario Argento or Abel Ferrara across a video-store counter somewhere.
From that perspective, it seems a shame to ignore this new straight-to-streaming story about a young female sex-worker marooned in a remote cabin as a “crowbar killer” (pictured below) patrols in the snow outside. But Alone at Night, from its lazy title onwards, seems to have no gusto for its genre, shockingly little shock value, and is not even distinguished by ineptitude.
Supported by queens-of-kitsch Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton, Ashley Benson plays the above-mentioned “cam girl” stuck out in the wilderness and cavorting for all manner of clients online, the most pervy of whom fantasises about making her his wife. Her line of work is no obstacle to being an archetypical nice-girl protagonist, but she’s a bored, whatever-dude type of character of no particular position in life other than being in a schlocky movie.
Benson is a decent actor who appears to have made a solid effort to turn up to the set on time, while circling round her on screen are a menacing trio of bearded, exceedingly wooden Affleck-a-likes, without Ben A’s deep intensity and incredible range.
Anderson is a little under-used as a wacko local sheriff with a Twin Peaks vibe, and Hilton is the host of a reality TV programme we see chunks of throughout, mostly to kill time until the uninspired cabin showdown (in a bedroom with a handy bath full of water in it).
There are some ham-fisted nods to the classics, from Halloween to Scream, a truly awful Jack Nicholson impression, and a twist that tries to be “meta” in the vein of Kevin Williamson, yet this minimal knowingness lacks the confidence of self-parody.
The idea that all men pose potentially violent threats to women has always been central to the slasher model. That can be seen as either helpful or unhelpful from a feminist angle, yet it seems as topical as ever today. Here, though, director Jimmy Giannopoulos keeps his distance from the socio-political or anything being influenced in the real online world.
Meanwhile, his movie poses a mortal threat to ChatGPT and the like: it’s proof that humans can write scripts indistinguishable from the noble labours of AI.
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