Director: Tom DeSimone
Cast: Linda Blair, Vincent Van Patten, Kevin Brophy, Jenny Neumann, Suki Goodwin, Jimmy Sturtevant, Peter Barton
Screenplay: Randy Feldman
101 mins. Rated R.

In the early 80s, Linda Blair was struggling to escape her child image in The Exorcist. It’s peculiar that being possessed and saying some of the dialogue Blair said in that film didn’t help enough on its own, but she wanted to be considered a respectable adult actress, so when she re-entered the world of horror, she wanted to make it on her terms. Hell Night pushes the actress into the world of college campuses, hazing, and dead killers returned from the grave.

The new pledges of Alpha Sigma Rho are all costumed up and ready for initiation. Their task is to enter and stay one night in Garth Manor, a dilapidated and empty mansion once owned by Raymond Garth. Garth reportedly murdered his family and hanged himself, but the bodies of two of his children were never found. Now locked in, strange happenings begin in Garth Manor, but is it simply college hazing, or is it the returned ghosts of the Garth massacre?

It seems like most viewers I’ve spoken to regard Hell Night as rather boring, and while the second act has some trouble in building tension, most of the movie worked pretty well for me. I feel like there is an inherent uncertainty about the spooky sights and sounds of Garth Manor, and I was genuinely uncertain about the nature of the presence. Was it actually the revenants of the Garth massacre or a college prank? As the film started to build upon the gothic visuals and the possibility of brutal hazing, I was never really certain until the end, and I think I would’ve been okay no matter what we eventually learned.

What this “slasher” loses in terms of inventive deaths and a memorable look, it more than makes up for with earnest characters and a killer location. I mean, sure, there’s too much time spent walking down corridors and chatting in rooms with stationary camera work, but the thrills are there, and I was concerned for my characters, so it has that going for it. I also liked that, beyond our four main characters, there is this foreboding presence of the fraternity outside the walls, and they provide enough additional tension to the rising fright in the building that it worked for me. Randy Feldman’s script gave way for four interesting and mostly likable characters, but he never forgot about the wider world around them.

Linda Blair and Peter Barton (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter) are both likable and they’re cute together, and Suki Goodwin is wild and vivacious and over-the-top fun. If anything, Vincent Van Patten’s character Seth is somewhat short-changed for development, but he gets a lot to do, including some surprising reveals in the back half.

Hell Night’s not perfect, but who is expecting that, anyway. What it is, though, is fun and more inventive than traditional slashers while also not relying so heavily on sleaze which saved more than one masked killer films. The legend of Garth Manor is spooky, and the screenplay mostly keeps the tension and pacing, except for the regular complaint of the second act. Hell Night is way better than people say, with a fun cast, gothic Hammer-esque atmosphere, and the add-on of the college hazing ritual. It’s definitely too long, but it’s a goofy good time, nonetheless.

3.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe