Slashening: The Final Beginning (2021)

Trying to break out of her shell, a timid woman is asked to join a support group for like-minded people in the local community and begins making friends with the other people around her, but when a strange killer begins knocking people off in the group she has to learn the strange connection between them to get away alive.

This was quite a fun and stylish genre effort. That this one decides to focus more on the straightforward horror side of the story is quite enjoyable and has a lot to like. The opening assault on the group partying at the house has some genuinely creepy ambushes with the killer jumping out of the darkness to grab people, while the museum sequence is quite impressive with the camera-work sweeping in circles showing everything happening in the area in an impressive sequence. The later scene taking out multiple victims at a restaurant in brutal fashion is quite good, and the series of chase scenes throughout the finale is well-handled with the idea being taken seriously enough that there’s a genuine threat posed by the killer. Still, even with the more prominent focus on horror, there’s still a lot of genuinely funny comedy here. The idea of the killer’s attack motives and general demeanor of the victims towards finally confronting the killer once they’re aware of his presence is the stereotypical reactions involving cowering away in a hysterically over-the-top manner without much fear derived from the situation. Much like the hilarious therapy session, the encounter with the stripper at the classy art museum or the constant attempts at being politically-correct, the attempts at comedy throughout here are quite enjoyable and make for a fun time here as these elements give this one quite a lot to like. There are still some problems on display here. One of the biggest issues is the amount of padding and unnecessary filler in the first half that takes quite a while before it gets to its main point. A lot of the scenes here, from the banter after the meeting to the scenes at the museum or the group of girlfriends hanging out at the bar, all tend to go on way too long to actually be as funny as they should be which can disrupt the pacing just as much as the scattershot plot. That’s the other real flaw as it tends to jump around with so many storylines that it’s sometimes hard to pick out what’s going on and why as not everything makes sense. Beyond these problems, this one was quite an enjoyable sequel.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Nudity and comedic drug use.