Popular reviews

• 

  Review by matt lynch ★★★

  This is why nobody likes art students.

• 

  Review by Todd Gaines ★★★ 25

  With its obvious ode to John Carpenter's Halloween and everything else that's retro slasher horror cool, Murder Party is the no-budget feature film debut from director Jeremy Saulnier, who took the indie world by storm in 2014 and opened a lot of mainstream eyes with his breakout hit Blue Ruin. While this comically darkly horrific tale about a guy who gets invited to a party you should never RSVP for is no Blue Ruin, it's a hilarious beginning for a director who will only get better with each movie. Krazy Kitty. Subway rap. The most bootleg Halloween costume in cinematic history. Never play with fire. Badass beards own mutton chops any day of the week. Baseball Furies' benchwarmer. Preservatives, can…

• 

  Review by bree1981 ★★★½ 9

  I've finally got round to watching the debut feature from director Jeremy Saulnier and while it was shot on a low budget and is fairly rough around the edge's, it's also extremely funny in places and shows a lot of promise. The kind of film where a lot of ideas have been thrown into the mix and while not all of them work, the success rate is pretty good.
  Set in NYC during Halloween, the film stars Chris Sharp as Chris, a loner civil servant who lives alone with his cat Sir Lancelot. As he heads home on Halloween after stopping off at the video store for some horror films to help pass the night, he stumbles over a small…

• 

  Review by Wood ★★★★

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  This movie is good because art students deserve to be brutally murdered while high on crank.

  Everybody dies, but death is best when Jeremy Saulnier is at the helm.

• 

  Review by Tony the Terror 🎃 ★★★★½ 4

  The funny thing about horror comedies is I’m almost never in the mood to watch one, but I almost always enjoy them when I do watch them. So I was surprised that last night I actually wanted to watch one and this one is pretty perfect.

  It blends both genres seamlessly with plenty of unexpected turns, very dark humor (the best kind right?), and some very fun WTF “laugh out loud and have your husband look at you weird because you’re wearing earbuds and you have to stop and explain what’s so funny but you forget to take your earbuds out and don’t realize you’re talking to him the way an idiot yells at a deaf person but you keep…

• 

  Review by ghostdinosaur ★ 1

  in my experience no satire of pretentious art students ever works because the satire creator never sees themselves as one of the pretentious ones.

• 

  Review by single white femalien ★★★★★ 1

  murder party has been one of my favorites since i was a cool teen and it remains one of my favorites and i love it and if u hate it i hate u get out

• 

  Review by Marianna Neal ★★ 4

  Me after watching this: "Ughhh... OK then?"
  Other reviews on Letterboxd: "oh, what a wonderful satire of NY art scene!"

  Basically, I guess I just don't hate art students as much as everyone else? Or I don't care enough to find this movie as entertaining as most people do? I'll just stick to Blue Ruin, Green Room, and Saulnier's future films. Who else is excited for Hold the Dark?

• 

  Review by LeSchroeck ★★★ 2

  Fühlte sich für mich und ob seiner Laufzeit ein wenig länger an, als er musste. Entschädigt aber mit einem doch recht saftigen Finale, bei dem auch schon mal eine Kettensäge durchs Gesicht gezogen wird. Letzteres ist insofern schon ein wenig lustig, wenn man sich die weiteren Werke Saulniers ansieht, die mit ihrer Gewalt so wohl dosiert umgehen und eben deshalb so viel schmerzvoller wirken. Als noch etwas ungelenkes, aber durchaus versiertes Frühwerk und Kammerspiel-mit-Kunstblut-Koks-und-Medium-Kunstsatire-Happen für zwischendurch: ok. Allzu viel mehr sollte man aber nicht erwarten.

• 

  Review by Tasha Robinson ★★½ 1

  Jeremy Saulnier's first feature, years before Blue Ruin and Green Room, is a micro-budgeted amateur indie cheapie, but it's still so recognizably his work, with incompetent, desperate characters locked in a tense push-and-pull situation with each other, and some startlingly graphic gore. A shy nebbish finds an invitation to a "murder party" and shows up to discover that the "artists" who planned the party want to murder him, and things get ridiculous from there. It's openly a dark comedy, made by Saulnier and some of the friends he used to make backyard home-video movies with as a child. (The making-of video, which includes scenes from those childhood projects, is an adorable must-see.) Not a fantastic movie, but an enjoyable background to Saulnier's later work.

• 

  Review by Jayson Kennedy ★½

  An art collective invites an unwitting Joe Blow to his own murder on Halloween, but best-laid plans fall through upon discovering they're as brickheaded as their victim.

  After a start that's raring to go, this horror comedy quiets into lots of character-driven talk that's just not my type of humor. The cardboard-clad man's captors in-fight and ruminate over intellectual claptrap (along with an awful inclusion of an awful epithet) while on various drugs and truth serum. Subtext seems to be the preception of art students mulling more over creation than actually engaging in the process.

  Murder Party picks back up after the group's tensions boil and ropes loosen, but the mayhem is little reward for its sagging midsection. Pretension isn't much fun even with some melting faces and corded chainsaws. Watched via Magnet Releasing's DVD.

• 

  Review by DirkH ★★★ 3

  Well, what a wonderful surprise this was!

  It is for the most part a clever ( sometimes a bit too clever ) satire, attacking the art scene. That gives some witty dialogue and some fresh humour.

  It is also an over the top, gory slasher that manages to look very convincing despite is obviously tiny budget.

  How these two elements mix is up for you to find out. I will say that it is a bit unbalanced and probably aims a bit too high but it is still a thoroughly entertaining watch that never outstays its welcome.