Dream Slashers (DVD)

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Dream Slashers reviewStarring Keren Gilbert, Jossara Jinaro, Jon Seminara, Emerson Brooks, Ryan Kitley, Esme Williams, Irwin Keyes

Directed by Phillipe Ney


The movie is called Dream Slashers. Why it’s called Dream Slashers is anybody’s guess since it has next to nothing to do with either dreams or slashers. In retrospect, I find myself wondering if the cheap Photoshop-looking DVD artwork was merely Westlake Entertainment’s way of acknowledging that there was nothing really worth seeing in this pointless, at times plotless, no budget, amateur production and that the lack of vagueness of the plot synopsis on the back of the case was also in response to the film’s threadbare storyline. Or maybe the slapdash DVD job was due to even the folks at Westlake Entertainment being incapable of watching the very movie they were distributing all the way through?

At first it seemed like Dream Slashers was going to be an anthology film. Halloween night, a trio of scantily clad women who all look like they’ve probably spent time in Brett Ratner’s hot tub meet up with a another scantily clad woman in devil horns named Meena, who is clearly supposed to be the devil incarnate. Revealing so is hardly a spoiler since it’s made apparent almost immediately and not just because the actress plays her role with all the subtlety of a late night horror movie hostess.

About two seconds after they all meet up, it’s back to someone’s pad to party, but first they have to change out of their skimpy lingerie costumes into different skimpy lingerie attire. Meena then begins to tell what she promises will be a scary story. I expected this to be the first of multiple stories. Nope, the movie is just this one story that’s frequently interrupted by the wraparound segments.

Meena’s alleged tale of terror has to do with a California huckster named Charlie Watts, played by a guy who looks like a young Viggo Mortensen and talks like he’s doing a Christian Slater impression. Having finally become a success, Charlie invites his childhood friends (two couples: one white, one black) to these beachside bungalows he owns to catch up on old times and take part in a 24-hour super orgy with some nameless extras that never really gets off the ground after Meena shows up, first to vaguely threaten him with owing her a debt, and then to accuse Charlie of trying to sexually assault her. Meena’s supposed to be the devil yet she behaves more like someone’s psycho ex-girlfriend out for revenge. In the beginning, Charlie doesn’t seem to have any clue who this mystery woman is or what she wants. Later on, he’s suddenly talking about how everyone’s doomed because of her. I felt like I’d missed a plot point along the way. I may have since Dream Slashers was practically daring me from early on to start making frequent use of the fast forward button.

Outside of a guy found dead in the swimming pool, the bulk of this story plays out less like a scary Halloween story and more like a god awful, softcore porn, digicam production that keep skimping on both the nudity and the sex scenes. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, more dead bodies began turning up and characters start getting attacked by an off-screen evil that best I can tell views the world from what looks like a black & white security camera point-of-view. The whole thing is needlessly drawn out, punishingly so given how little actual plot there is, and the ultimate revelation is lame. Plus, the fate of the Charlie Watts character is also a moot point since the first scene of the story reveals in advance his ultimate outcome.

Meena’s tale keeps getting interrupted so that the three other women she’s telling this going-nowhere-fast, scare-free story to can keep doing mundane things like smoke pot, talk about smoking pot, talk about sex, order pizza, pillow fight for ten seconds, and play a game of “Truth or Dare”. These wraparound segments play like gonzo filmmaking at its lamest.

The one thing the film seems to keep promising more than anything else is nudity – nudity it doesn’t deliver. Outside of a topless woman in Meena’s tale, the only other nudity comes when one of the girl’s “Truth or Dare” bet requires her to run down the beach topless. Just as she walks out the door the film abruptly cuts to discolored footage of a long distance shot of a topless woman in army fatigues, not even the same body type as the actress playing the girl who lost the bet, running down the beach in super slow motion for five seconds. Then the original girl runs back into the house with her clothes on, pretending to cover herself. What the hell was that?

And what the hell is the underrated character actor Irwin Keyes doing in this? He’s even listed as a co-producer; though that could just mean they promised him some backend payment to appear in this. Then again, that would be assuming there was any back-end money to be made from this. Keyes plays multiple roles as a security guard at the hotel in Meena’s story and a random knife-wielding psycho in a 30-second scene also in Meena’s story that didn’t seem to have any connection to the rest of the story. Was that supposed to have been the security guard gone evil? I’ve honestly no clue what that short sequence was about. He then appears one more time as a pizza delivery man with a Quasimodo complex who one of the girls in the wraparound segments is Truth or Dared to kiss. I’d like to think Keyes only appeared in this film as a favor to someone because it’s pretty embarrassing watching him here hamming it up badly with such dreadful material.

The most amazing thing of all is that this DVD has numerous extras: a blooper reel, the original trailer, a photo gallery, and most inconceivable in my opinion – both extended and deleted scenes. No, I did not watch any of this. I’d had all of Dream Slashers I could stand for the rest of my existence. I can’t even begin to imagine what the footage that didn’t make the final cut of this movie could have been like. I did, however, watch another extra listed as “Irwin’s Madness”. It was nothing more than a bunch of alternate takes of that unexplainable scene where Keyes acted as a knife wielding psycho. A little Irwin Keyes goofiness can go a long way but nothing he or anyone else could do could make this movie worth watching.

I don’t know what the point of Dream Slashers was supposed to be, why this movie was made, or why the hell a legitimate distribution company would think anyone would want to watch it.

Special Features

  • Bloopers
  • Extended Scenes
  • Deleted Scenes
  • “Irwin’s Madness”
  • Photo Gallery
  • Trailer
  • MOVIE

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    EXTRAS

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