European Horror Month Part 1: SL8 N8 (or Slaughter Night)

I'm pretty sure that when Thomas Edison invented cinema, he had SL8 N8 in mind. And although he tried his damnedest, going so far as to electrocute an elephant on film, it would take more than a century of cinematic progress before SL8 N8 would be possible. This film has it all: child murder, "voodoo" rituals, ouija boards, tarot reading, an adandoned mine, demonic possession, and loads and loads of sweet, sweet murder.


Kristol - Impossibly Adorable


Hailing from the Netherlands/Belgium, SL8 N8 tells the story of an impossibly adorable Dutch girl (Kristol) and her college-age friends who journey to exotic Belgium to fetch her deceased father's final book manuscript, only to take an ill-fated tour through a mine that became the final resting place for notorius serial child-murderer, Andries Martiens. When the group inevitably gets trapped underground, they sensibly pop ecstacy tablets and use the ouija board that was among Kristel's father's possessions. The spirit of Martien (or the demonic forces loosed into the world by him, I was never quite sure) possesses the attractive twenty-somethings one-by-one, turning them into Evil Dead-style hellspawns who do cool stuff like decapitation and ripping apart people's limbs with their teeth.

The movie opens with a flashback in which we see, in graphic detail, the severed heads of six children impaled on pikes, with two living children tied to chairs, awaiting their inevitable slaughter. The first child has her head cut off and impaled while another does her best not to watch. And that's just the first three minutes.

From there we meet the main characters, a bunch of college kids at a rave. While some might accuse the characters of douchiness, I found them all relatable and fairly appealing. While there are definite hints of douchedom, they all seem like people you wouldn't mind hanging out with. However, when things start to go bad, all of that changes. The douches spray their douchedom hither and yon, while the more level-headed charcters remain level-headed. Just once I'd like to see the "slut" character turn out to be the one who takes charge and gets everyone one alive. But no such luck here.

Arfter fooling around with an ouija board and such, the kids start getting possessed and devouring each other, which is, of course, all great fun, and after awhile, the movie ends. Do you really need to know any more?

How many Dutch does it take to operate a ouija board?

In all seriousness, SL8 N8 is a pretty silly movie, but an infinitely enjoyable one. So if you're the type to go looking for plot holes and such, you're going to find SL8 N8 ripe for the picking. But if you're just out for a fun, scary time, you could do much worse. And last I checked, Slaughter Night was available via Netflix Streaming.

While the sheer fact of it being European lends it a sense of credibility, I see SL8 N8 as being on par with the Friday the 13th sequels (which is not a knock). It is fun,  it serves its purpose without demanding too much original thought, and it killed 90 or so minutes of my life (okay, 270 mintues, as I've watched it 3 times now). But enough about me. Has anyone else seen this? And did you have as much of a blast as I did?