Ah yes, another case of the box art being better than the product inside as Frightmare is a woefully inept, and quite horrible, slasher flick. I mean how original can a movie be when even the title of it has been used twice before with Pete Walker's 1974 film and Norman Thaddeus Vane's 1982 stinker. But originality is the least of this movies worries as it continually astounded me with its complete lack of pacing and the fact that it has no real purpose whatsoever.

The best thing here is the opening sequence, so enjoy it while you can, as it's an extended "stalk and kill" scene that has a teenage girl being followed home from her work by a mysterious figure who proceeds to kill her parents, write a bunch of mumbo jumbo on the walls with blood, and string her up between two trees in the front yard before deciding to cut her open with his big-ass knife and let her guts go all over the place. Of course that description is better than what we see because you're probably thinking in your head, "hey, that sounds gory!", when in reality this is so lacking in blood, deaths, and even nudity that you'll be bored almost as soon as this scene is over.

From there we find out that it was the work of the "Consceince Killer" who is a masked fiend that is apparently picking-off people he finds to be "naughty". It's certainly an interesting idea for a killer, despite the fact it's pretty much ripped-off from 1995's Se7en, but it never explores the idea instead setting up multiple scenes of "too old for high school" friends delivering extremely poorly written banter with a few moments of them being knocked-off in order to keep this with the tag of "slasher movie".

There's just so many dumb as dirt moments on hand here I was considering hunting down writer-director Ash Smith just so I could bring him over to my house, pull out some DVDs like the original Halloween, and show him how a slasher movie is really made. He's certainly a better director than writer, but not by much as the film is filled with tons of static framing (apart from a few stedi-cam inspired moments early on) and ineptly staged stalking scenes.

And speaking of Smith's ability as a writer... I'd rather not. He's taken his love of 1996's Scream and given his characters some of the worst "hip" dialogue ever uttered. The characters as constantly doing retarded things and constantly are taking actions that are nothing more than annoying. For example, when their car breaks down they head-off to a nearby house, walk in proclaiming "hello, we're just a bunch of high school kids and our car broke down, we need water for our radiator" and don't at all find it weird that this rundown house is filled with weapons - at least not until our killer is on the room playing around with a chainsaw...

I can't quite express in words how much I hated Frightmare - it's yet another amateurishly made and downright awful insult to horror fans everywhere, and another example that almost anything can get released on home video these days. (Chris Hartley, 6/28/05)

Directed By: Ash Smith.
Written By: Ash Smith.

Starring: Shanda Lee Besler, Brandon O'Dell, Summer Sloan LaPann, Michael Short.