Movie Reviews

Hey, look it’s director Oliver Blackburn! Been a while since we heard from this guy. Seven years to be exact. That’s when he gave us “Donkey Punch”, a stylish and rather tense movie that was pretty okay.

His latest movie stars Haley Bennett as Justine, a college student staying on campus all by her lonesome self when everybody else heads home for Thanksgiving weekend. The problem is that she isn’t really all alone anymore when a mysterious girl (Ashley Greene) and her three tinfoil-masked buddies start terrorizing Justine. Apparently they are part of a cult that’s killing innocent girls all over the country because Kristy (which is what they call all their victims) is the face of God… or maybe because they are fucking insane. Oh yeah, almost forgot… there are two security guards as well. But we quickly find out they don’t appear to be very good at their jobs.

At first Kristy… sorry, Justine… does a lot of running and hiding. Well, actually she’s better at running than she is at hiding, because they always seem to find her in a matter of minutes. Eventually, Justine has had enough of being called the wrong name all the time and decides to flip the game on these freaks.

The story isn’t very original (think Ils or The Strangers with a little bit of The Purge thrown in) and the kill scenes aren’t extremely gory or inventive, but Blackburn does a very solid job of keeping you on the edge of your seat for almost an hour after the shit starts hitting the fan. Okay, so the baddies in this one might try a little hard to be über-scary with their constant whistling, the scraping on the walls with their weapons or the creepy standing and staring, but it doesn’t get too annoying. And kudos to Haley Bennett who manages to carry much of the movie on her own with ease. Overall, Kristy is an effective thriller that I thoroughly enjoyed.