Vicious Fun

This entertaining comedy chiller stars Evan Marsh as Joel, a geeky horror magazine writer who is embroiled in a night of bloodthirsty frights after inadvertently gatecrashing a support group for serial killers. When the group discover an interloper in their midst, Joel is forced to go on the run and to kill or be killed, aided by Carrie (Amber Goldfarb), a femme fatale vigilante. By setting the action in the early 1980s, director Cody Calahan and his co-writer James Villeneuve not only pay homage to the conventions of bygone slasher pics (referenced in the names of several characters) but also the music and fashions of the era. Some of the gags are groan-inducing but all the better for it, and while the gruesome set pieces tend to be signposted and predictable they're dispatched with stylish glee, as if celebrating scares we've seen before, rather than inventing new ones.