If we're absolutely honest then it takes some courage to title your film Dead By Dawn. That's what a lot of people say when referring to Evil Dead II, it's the name of a long-running horror movie festival in Edinburgh, and it's an easy catchphrase to reel off in any number of different "evil" voices you want to try. But naming your film Dead By Dawn is also, arguably, a good way to get horror fans interested in seeing it. It worked on me anyway.
Written and directed by Dawid Torrone, his feature debut, this is a muddled and messy slasher that only really works when homaging some classics from yesteryear. Sadly, you'll spend time during those homages being reminded of better films you could spend your time watching.
The basic plot concerns a group of actors spending some time in an empty theatre as they rehearse a play that they're about to perform. There's a killer on the loose, of course, and people soon start dying from impromptu open artery surgery.
The cast may include Sylwia Boron, Monika Frajczyk, Adam Machalica, Piotr Nerlewski, Lukasz Szczepanowski, and Paulina Zwierz, but I would already struggle to identify any of those people in a line-up. That's partly due to them being unfamiliar to me, which is on me, but also partly to do with their characters being completely uninteresting, which is on the film. Nobody here gets to stand out, and none of the characters are given enough defining features to get viewers invested in their fate.
At least the killer is memorable and fun . . . is something I would say if the killer was memorable and fun. Okay, there's a decently strange look for the headwear, which is a plus, but the kills are as underwhelming and dull as they are bloody. Torrone doesn't seem to know how to make the most of his simple premise, and also doesn't seem to be able to decide which Italian director he wants to spend more time paying tribute to (Argento, Fulci, and Soavi all seem to be vying for his attention).
The 87-minute runtime shouldn't be a chore, especially when the kills start being properly showcased, but it is. Everything feels tired and slow, perhaps due to Torrone not having the confidence to lean into the more fun tropes of the slasher movie (the backstory, the convoluted motivation, the way things are ramped up to a final sequence that often has bodies popping out of temporary hiding places while the killer stalks one character that you've come to really root for). The sad thing is that it's clear that Torrone loves the movies that he's making reference to. He just can't blend everything together to make something that feels like a worthwhile descendant of them.
3/10
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