David Schow did the script for this engaging, self-referential modern slasher - perhaps explaining the nasty edge and the fact that Warner Premiere (who made it in under their Dark Castle banner) are thus far refusing to unleash the Unrated cut of which Dave Parker spoke at Frightfest. (That said, the R-rated cut still goes a lot further than used to be permitted within the rating).

   Tad Hilgenbrink is a film student fixated on a notorious “lost” 80’s slasher flick called The Hills Run Red, featuring a generic silent masked killer nicknamed “Baby face”. All that exists from this movie is a grainy trailer (complete with gaudy gore footage and old-school Voiceover Guy) and the knowledge that the filmmaker responsible vanished from the public eye immediately after its only screening. Hilgenbrink is on a mission to find the director and chronicle his passionate search for the movie itself. Shortly after finding the director’s sexy daughter (Sophie Monk), he finds the backwoods location where the flick was shot and everyone finds themselves in danger from a killer seemingly emulating the look and murderous activities of “Babyface”.

   There’s not much originality on display here, with the more obvious post-modern elements playing out like any number of moments from post-SCREAM slasher movies, though Schow undermines expectations at different points with panache. There’s an admittedly funny, sardonic reference to one character (bucking the current cliché) having a full, five-bar cell phone signal, and there’s a cute foreshadowing of this story’s own knowingly stereotypical rapin’ rednecks. Schow punctuates the conventions with enough skill to make us forgive him for an annoying Randy-like character whose job is to hammer home exactly what the conventions of “scary movies” are.

   Substantial fun is to be had from the glimpses of the fake 80’s horror film within the film (and some great faux movie posters), even if what we see of it looks suspiciously closer to the post-SAW era of sadistic violence as opposed to the relatively mild stab n slash grue of the period it’s meant to represent. The pic is old-school in its exploitation of its leading ladies : both fetching main actresses get naked, and director Parker is (understandably) fixated on Monk’s oft-nude body. The gore is strong and bloody and satisfying, with the tone set by a rousing title sequence in which a kid slices off his own face starting with the cheeks.

   It’s a slickly made, sharply paced movie which, although punctuated by wholly obvious loud musical stings, is at least built upon a sound premise, and has at its core a creepy new broken doll-masked killer to add to the slasher pantheon. It’s enjoyably mean-spirited (a sicko coda features the entrapped heroine now impregnated) and excels in the scenes with the always great William Sadler as the psychotic film director : the kind of guy who fucks his own daughter at the age of 12 (“nearly 13” he keenly adds) because he was in a period of mourning for his late wife. So that’s OK, then.