Murder Party is a 2007 horror comedy film by auteur Jeremy Sauliner. It stars Chris Sharp, Aandy Barnett, Macon Blair, Paul Goldblatt, William Lacy, Stacy Rock, and Skei Saulnier. It premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival. It is currently available on Netflix.
Sharp stars as a lonely young man named Chris who finds himself without any plans on Halloween. But on his way home, he stumbles upon an invitation to a costume "Murder Party" let on the ground. Chris decides to attend and is taken hostage by the party's hosts, a group of art students, whom reveal their intention to murder Chris for art. Shortly after announcing their plans, the group's patron Alexander (Barnett) arrives to witness the murder and decide whom he will offer a grant for their art. But the group decides to wait until the witching hour before committing the crime, so Alexander and the art students kill time with pizza, sex, video games, and a game of truth or dare aided by sodium pentothal. Chris, tied to a chair and gagged, watches their debaucherous shenanagins as he awaits his inevitable artistic murder.
The small cast play the roll of self-absorbed and vapid artists convincingly, each one a desperate sycophant hanging off Alexander, who is every bit as vapid but twice as slimy. Sharp does a commendable job performing through mumbles and facial expression, making the most out of a mostly still and silent roll.
The narrative unfolds in small selection of cramped locations that bespeak the low budget of the film more than they do any mood, theme, or style. As a whole the film is distinctly lacking in style, which is surprising for an auteur production. It is what one might describe as a journeyman effort in film craft: competent but no more. The exception to this is in the exterior shots of the New York residential neighbourhood where Chris lives. The establishing shots capture the beauty of late October superbly, and the dressing of cheap Halloween decorations evoke an authentic seasonal charm that is enough to win over any Halloween fan.
But despite so much working in favour of the film, it was ultimately a disappointment. As a comedy, the film really only has one joke: look at how vapid all these art students are. Aren't they pretentious and asinine? This joke is dragged out in various forms through the entire second act of the film and it wears thin quickly. I suspect this would make for decent catharsis if you went in with a pre-existing hatred for the art student stereotype it's using. But if, like me, you're lacking that need to see straw men suffer, it is a lot of mean spirited tedium as you watch unlikable characters be unlikable as you wait for them to die.
Beyond its premise, the horror part of "horror comedy" doesn't kick in until the end. I imagine most people will be able to predict how the film climaxes before the halfway mark and it's a promising idea: a satisfying and humorous payoff that sees the art students' debauchery and narcissism give way to violence, leaving poor Chris to watch from his place in the chair. But the film doesn't even commit to the obvious choice, and halfway through it abandons this idea for an even more generic murderer-chases-victim ending that works in a few more jabs at pretentious artists before winding up with Chris returning home.
If you watch enough indie horror films, you start to notice a few problematic trends. One trend is that the film makers seem to go out of their way to make their characters unlikable. I can only hazard a guess at saying this is to make it all the more satisfying when they meet their bloody demise. But the cost for this cynical pandering to a gore-hungry audience leaves us with 90 minutes of watching people we don't like and that's not enjoyable. Murder Party goes out of its way, knowing its characters are awful people, but offers zero reprieve. Chris is not developped enough to be a hero we can root for or sympathise with. For all Sharp's effort to make the most of his role, there just isn't enough character for him to work with.
The second trend is that the auteur will come up with one interesting idea but have no idea how to execute that in a feature length format. Long time readers might remember that this was basically the problem I had with The Human Centipede. One idea, stretched thin into tedium. Similarly, Murder Party's one gag is not nearly enough to sustain it. When it isn't unpleasant, it's boring. The premise itself earns little more than a chuckle, meaning you can get pretty much the entire enjoyment of the film by reading the synopsis.
If what you want is to watch unpleasant people be unpleasant before meeting a bloody but uninteresting death; if you have a particular hated of young vapid and narcissistic artists and want to see them make fools of themselves before suffering, then this film might offer something like catharsis, but I'm not sure it will offer anybody real enjoyment. Ultimately, it's just a boring film. Not even bad in an interesting way.
