Popularity Killer

Director - Steve Goltz (Teddy)
Starring - Courtney Ellen Bay, Matty Dorschner (Blood Brothers), and Jennifer Frey (The Spade County Massacre)
Release Date - 2011
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "Every school has an "it" list...pray you're not on this one!"
Format - Streaming (Youtube)

Rating (out of 5):

     After watching Blood Brothers and discovering it was not what I thought I would be, my mind started wondering as I tried to think of all the possibilities of what Popularity Killer was could be about.  Could it be a straight forward slasher like I thought the last film was or could it be something completely different?  However, with a name like Popularity Killer I could only think of the slasher story lines, so after I wrote Blood Brothers I pulled up Youtube and gave it a go.

     The film opens as a couple make out in a car on the side of the road.  The boy is a little too touchy feely and the girl stops him.  The two argue for a few moments and when the guy discovers she will not give it up to him he leaves her on the side of the road.  As she is walking home a figure appears behind her wearing a mask and wielding a knife.  As you can imagine, the figure kills her in good ol fashioned slasher style.  The following day at school everyone is talking about it and most suspect it was her boyfriend.  School is released early because of the murder and two girls decide to watch movies that night and spend time together.  However, one of the girls has made different plans and invited a few more people over to watch Night of the Living Dead and drink.  The murdered girl's boyfriend shows up hammered with another girl from a rival school and the rest of the group feel uncomfortable having him there and leave.  Two girls leave the little get to together and one of them is murdered by the mask wearing figure.  After a few more minutes the drunk and his date leave and meet their demise.  Now left is one of the girls and a guy friend.  When the girl leaves the room the guy is stabbed by the figure and when the girl enters the room, the figure removes the mask and reveals their true identity.

     This movie was exactly what I thought it was, a true genuine slasher.  It is nice to see a modern slasher follow the same plot formula as the classics which is something the new slashers have steered away from.  The acting in this one is kinda bad with the exception of a few characters.  The special effects are on par with the slasher films I grew up with and the opening kill was great.  Unfortunately, they were unable to follow that up and gave us stock slasher kills.  Opening the movie with such a great kill and then have the killer just stab the rest of the victims is a bit of a let down.  The viewer expects the ending to be bigger than the opening and that is not what we got.  The story is stock slasher story and that is fine with me as long as the movie is pulled right. However, the killer is predictable and I called it as soon as the character was introduced.  A little more thought could have been applied when writing the story.  This movie is entertaining but does not have replay value at all.  If you can, watch it on Youtube instead of buying this one, because you will never watch it again.