Shudder Saturday: Party Hard, Die Young (2018)

There's nothing all that wrong with Party Hard, Die Young, an Austrian slasher movie set in Croatia. Let me just start by saying that much. It may not seem that way by the time I get to the other end of this review, but I'll try to stay positive as I formulate my final thoughts.

Elisabeth Wabitsch is Julia, a young woman out for a fun time of partying with her friends in Croatia. Unfortunately, that fun isn't going to last. Friendships are strained, alcohol leads to illness, and there's a masked killer out to spoil the party. But a good party isn't easily spoiled by a killer, especially when the attendees are either too busy getting wasted or unwilling to believe that some of their friends have been assisted off the mortal coil.

For any standard slasher movie you need a killer with a decent mask, an assortment of disposable characters, some decent kills, and a backstory that reveals some tragic past incident motivating the killer. Party Hard, Die Young has all of those things. It's also well-paced, just about managing to avoid outstaying its welcome for the 90-minute runtime.

Dominik Hartl does good work in the director's chair (although I am now wondering why I have yet to see his previous movie, Attack Of The Lederhosen Zombies), trying his best with the visuals to compensate for the rather weak script, written by Robert Buchschwenter and Marin Lomot. There are some great moments here, with the second main death scene being among the very best I have seen in the subgenre. It's an energised mix of drunken teens and neon lighting, sadly setting a bar that the rest of the film never reaches again.

Wabitsch is perfectly acceptable in her role, although her character isn't all that interesting, or likeable. She's surrounded by the usual selection of attractive young men and women, with almost none of them making an impression. They're so interchangeable and uncharismatic that I can't even be bothered to namecheck them. The only exception is Chantal Pausch (playing Carmen), who benefits from the script giving her one scene-stealing moment, which is more than most of the others get.

I already mentioned what we're used to seeing in any standard slasher movie. Party Hard, Die Young checks everything off the list. Sadly, it doesn't do anything new or particularly clever with the subgenre tropes. Although there's nothing really wrong with it, script failings aside (and, hey, if horror fans were put off by bad scripts then we'd only ever have about twenty movies to enjoy), there's nothing to make it stand out. Of course, a slasher movie that doesn't stand out is still much more entertaining than a slasher movie that doesn't even try. At least this tries.

5/10

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