Just Before Dawn
I was running a little late and didn't have time to make decisions so I just picked one of the first things on Shudder. It described it as having a twist and surprisingly beautiful shots so I was like "Maybe this is an overlooked gem." It isn't. But it also isn't bad, certainly by the standards of the 80s slasher. It's got good and bad and it kind of evens out.
I'll start with the bad, because I like to end positive. A lot of it is pretty generic. I'm rarely the horror viewer who looks for "cool kills" but these were largely kind of vanilla, save for one (which I'll get to). The twist is just OK, and it's a nickel they spend early in regards to the antagonistic force and is both works in the sense that the other characters don't know and there is therefore suspense but we are also impatient to see more cool things done with it. The teens are not complete jerks but clearly enough to make them seem like they are punished for their foolhardiness and are thinly drawn. The biggest problem is the enemy is ridiculous looking. Obviously it's an unfortunate intellectually disabled stereotype but even beyond that offense, it's quite broad and silly. Remember the dumb aliens from Star Trek who can only steal other tech? Imagine that, except sillier and slathered in offal.
On the good: George Kennedy is in it and he's trying. Like, it's not amazing but he does a decent understated job. It's a bit of a slow burn movie in the middle, which I don't mind. Some of the movie is genuinely suspenseful and I think they have a few tricks they reuse but are still ones other Halloween imitators should have aped (like a protagonist not noticing a corpse made much more obvious to the viewer or having the more threatening action happening in the background of a shot. And the claim of beautifully shot is not wrong, though I think that comes down a little less to the competency of the cinematographer, who did a good job, and more the location scout, who found some beautiful places to film in. And the film doesn't let it go to waste. And finally, the final kill is something I've not seen in a movie before, in which the protagonist
beats the villain by jamming her entire arm down his throat until he suffocates to death.
So not essential viewing but if you want to watch one of the better slashers of the 80s after you've gone through the more famous ones, this isn't bad. And it's from the director of Squirm, the killer worm movie that was on MST3k.