Never Go Into A Haunted Mine

One of the reasons I haven't been writing much lately is because just after Thanksgiving I discovered that 17 movies were being removed from my Instant Watch Queue. At first I was going to try and get them all watched, but after two days of that, I gave up. I don't mind watching a bunch of movies in row sometimes, but not for four days straight. I did get a lot of them in though, and all but one of the 17 movies was a foreign movie. That is what gave me the idea of doing only foreign movies this month. My next movie up for review, which is already back up on Instant Watch, is a movie from Belgium/Netherlands called Slaughter Night (2006). The original Netherlands name for the movie was SL8N8. I know it looks kind of stupid, but it does actually play into the plot at one point.

Kristel (Victoria Koblenko) is out hitting the bars with her friends one night when her car decides it doesn't want to start. She calls her dad (Martijn Oversteegen), who comes to pick the girls up. After talking to the girls about college and such, dad learns that Kristel is planning on leaving school for a while in order to travel with her friends. This doesn't go over to well with him, and they argue about it after dropping off the friends. While the are doing this, a truck t-bones them. Kristel survives, but her dad does not. Kristel learns after the funeral that her father had some personal things in Belgium that needed to be collected. Her dad was writing a book about Andries Martiens, a man said to have murdered seven children in 1857. As legend has it, he was found guilty and was given a choice. He could either be killed, or he could go into the mines. Back then in the mines, there wasn't a good way to explode the gas build up, so they would send convicts down there to do it by hand. They were wrapped in wet cloth and if they managed to survive, they would be set free. Martiens didn't survive but his ghost is said to still be in the mines. Kristel heads there with her friends, and is talked into taking a tour of the mines. They discover that there is some truth to legends.

As you have probably guessed, Slaughter Night is a combination of slasher and ghost story. The ghost story part of the plot, while important, gives way to it being a slasher flick.What attracted me to this movie was that it was set in a mine. It doesn't hold a candle to My Bloody Valentine, but it still wasn't half bad. Some of the kills was well done and the killer does actually look pretty cool when wrapped in wet cloth. Slaughter Night also has a pretty cool plot to it, with an interesting back story in Andries Martiens. Once the story moves into the mines, it does start to fall apart some and throws it into average movie turf. Part of the problem was the mine itself. It was hard to tell where everyone in the mine was in relation to each other. At one point the killer seems to get around very quickly, a little too quick in fact. Most of the movie takes place at night, which doesn't matter in the mine, but explains why they get stuck down in it. I just bring this up because it was hard to figure out how much time had passed. There are a lot of fade outs to black, so I was never sure if writers/directors Frank van Geloven and Edwin Visser were just fans of that or if it was supposed to show the passing of time. An annoying thing that happens is the elevator is shut down because it is closing time, which is why the group gets stuck in the mine, but then later on it suddenly works again even though no one turns it back on.

Slaughter Night will never rank up there as one of the most gory films, but it does have some nice moments. There are plenty of heads to be found and what was nice about them was they actually look real. There was also a nice effect when a shovel meets up with one persons mouth. I know this has been done before, but it was still a well done effect. The acting seemed to be just okay to me. I wasn't really all the impressed with anyone, and the characters could be pretty stupid at times, which did lead to laugh here and there.

Something that confused me some about Slaughter Night was that I was never sure what the killer was trying to do. You see, there was a reason for the killing of kids. He had a reason behind it. I will let you watch the movie in order to find out what that reason was though. Now in present day, I wasn't real sure why he was killing again. If what he was doing didn't require the death of children, why did he kill them then? If it did require that, then why was he killing college age people this time around? Was he trying to complete what he didn't finish back in 1857, or was there a different reason this time around? The plot itself can't seem to make up its mind on how to answer those questions.

Even though I would suggest giving this one a watch at some point, I couldn't get passed the problems I had with it. I found it fun and it managed to entertain me, so that is always a good thing. Since it is back on Instant Watch, I only know this because it shows it as my last movie watched when it didn't just yesterday, that makes it an easy way for some of you to give Slaughter Night a watch. If you don't mind sub titled films, give it a try.
3 out of 5 Wondering how the killer got into the wet cloth suit so quickly