Final Scream

A rich bitch (Erinn Carter) throws a Halloween birthday party for her sister (Melissa Renee Martin) at a secluded house where a family was murdered years earlier. Unbeknownst to the innocent sister and her mentally unstable boyfriend (Jamie Gannon), they're actually being set up as guinea pigs for a plan to turn the house into a bed and breakfast where make-believe murder mystery games are to be played. Who better to show up than a real masked killer with a knife?

Martin and (especially) Chris Boyd are better actors than usual for a David DeCoteau movie, but this is basically just a bunch of long, boring, talky sequences punctuated by kill scenes so tame John Ashcroft wouldn't even raise an eyebrow at them. A few ridiculous surprises pop up near the end, but they do not make up for the tediousness of the first hour.

Score: 2 out of 10

A wealthy group of recent college grads are invited to participate in a "murder mystery" game. It begins as a fun evening of scary stunts featuring rubber knives, fake blood, and a "murderer" played by an actor in a creepy mask. But when the body count becomes real, the players soon realize that one of them is a real killer and the rest of them are playing an altogether different game...to stay alive.

Final Stab is a pretty decent horror flick made in 2001. The acting by the main characters is pretty good for a B movie. There is a little bit of blood and no nudity. Overall I would recommend this to any slasher fan I guess. Don't expect this to be very scary cause it's not one of those "on the edge of your seat" horror movies. About half way through I was able to figure out who the killer was. It's a watchable thriller with minimum gore.

5/10

'Final Stab' also known as 'Final Scream' is a straight to DVD slasher flick from the early 00's and was one of the many attempts from this era for low budget filmmakers to cash in on the 'Scream' franchise. This is about as generic a slasher flick can get with its very 90's dated feel with all the tropes present with its predictable structure, convoluted writing, badly written stock characters and obvious plot twists that you can easily coming a mile off. This isn't a good slasher flick by any stretch of the imagination.

The plot = Angela (Melissa Renee Martin) along with her boyfriend Charlie (Jamie Gannon) gets invited to a party by Angela's sister Kristin (Erinn Hayes) at a secluded mansion along with some of her friends to take part in a murder mystery game, but soon enough the game becomes real, and the guests starts getting killed off one by one.

The movie's pacing is thankfully fairly fast even if nothing all that interesting is happening on screen, as there's almost no atmosphere and boring bloodless kills. The direction by David DeCoteau is passable at best, just the basic point and shoot without any flair or energy and the constant thunderstorms which are obviously flashing strobe lights. But given the time constraints and low budget it's fine. So yeah, everything is just basic and by the numbers without any creativity whatsoever.

The performances are lacking direction though, its basically TV movie acting and not the good ones, but the cast are trying at the very least, but they're all very thinly written and comes across as fake. Erinn Hayes as Kristin probably gives the best performance here giving a very melodramatic and hammy performance and really gets into her bitchy role quite nicely. But even that's just the best out of a bad bunch. The rest of the cast are just unmemorable and flat.

Overall 'Final Stab' lacks any joy or fun and only seek out if you wanna kill some time, but other than that it others nothing to the genre and there's far better examples of slasher flicks out there.

Kristen is spoiled rich and always gets what she wants, even to see her very own sisters' psychotic boyfriend snap. So Kristen sets up the idea for a murder mystery party at an old house in the country. She invites people she went to college with and hires an actor to play a killer. She then has Angela (her sister) and Charlie (sisters boyfriend) come to the 'surprise' party. Kristen plans it out perfect, Charlie sees the first fake death right in the living room with everyone else and then he begins to panic and rushes out of the house. That's when Kristen's games begin. However, she thinks she has the perfect plot until the people really start dying. They really do have a killer among them. Sounds pretty good huh? Overall you could tell this movie was a "B" movie because of the poor directing and blood. The acting wasn't bad but as you can see plot is very good. Even though this was a predictable movie I'd rate this.. 6/10.

I know David DeCoteau films will never be mistaken as great art. But if they were at least entertaining then their lack of artistic merit wouldn't be so bad but alas, his films are rarely entertaining, which makes these producers products even more tedious to watch. And FINAL STAB is one tedious film: a bland film with a bland title with bland actors in a bland one-setting story. A game of Pong is more compelling than this so-called horror film.

The funny thing about this film is that it was shot in widescreen and yet the film was never released theatrically. So why bother shooting this direct-to-home video film in widescreen?

Anyway, there's almost nothing else worth mentioning about FINAL STAB. It's pretty difficult to write a concise critique for such a bland film.