Stag Night (2008) Reviews

• No Way Out

  claudio_carvalho2009-07-04

  In New York, on the bachelor party of Mike (Kip Parude), he goes with his troublemaker brother Tony (Breckin Meyer) and his friends Carl (Scott Adkins) and Joe (Karl Geary) to a strip club; however Tony gets in a fight with other costumers and the group is expelled by the bouncers. Tony convinces Mike and his friends to take the subway and go to another bar; in the wagon, they see the striper Michelle (Sarah Barrand) and her friend Brita (Vinessa Shaw), and Carl makes a corresponded move to Michelle. When Tony flirts with Brita, she becomes upset and uses a spray against him. The train stops in a traffic light in an abandoned station, and Brita forces the door and leaves the wagon to breath, followed by the others. However the signal opens and they are left behind in the station, Mike, Tony, Joe and Brita decide to walk through the tunnel to the next station and seek help for Carl and Michelle that prefer to stay alone dating in the station. When they reach the next station, they witness a trio of brutal homeless men killing a guard and they run through the tunnel trying to escape from the deranged murderers in the beginning of their nightmarish night. The gore "Stag Night" is a rip-off of "Creep" with Franka Potente, i.e., a claustrophobic plot with people trapped in the subway tunnels. The acting and make-up are excellent, but the camera work is terrible in the action scenes. The flawed screenplay uses many clichés of the genre and Brita is indeed the only character that takes reasonable attitudes in a distressed situation of panic. This movie is not totally bad and entertains, but could be better and better. My vote is five. Title (Brazil): "Fuga Sobre Trilhos" ("Run on the Rails")

• Attack of the camera man with Parkinson's disease

  phantasmda2010-06-23

  This has to be the strangest horror film I've ever seen...I'll list the basics: Decent production values: Check Decent enough cast and not bad acting: Check Dark and atmospheric: Check Creepy and plenty of jumps: Check Great gore effects and plenty of blood: Check Decent soundtrack: Check All of the elements to make a good horror film for even the most demanding horror fans...So why on earth did the director feel the need to have his camera man shake the camera from side to side ALL THE WAY through the film??? It was nauseating, annoying, difficult to make out what was going on for most of the time. The action and horror scenes were extremely difficult to concentrate on...Underneath this was a very good horror film but it was totally ruined by the worst camera work I have ever seen in a film. I'll give it a 3 purely for what lies underneath but it loses 5 stars for the camera work...Hugely disappointing...Watch Creep instead, it's no classic but it holds the same premise and more importantly, you can see what's going on.

• poor locations and cliché script sink the film

  dbborroughs2009-10-11

  Group of men on a bar hopping bachelor party take the subway to go to the next stop. When the car stalls at an abandoned subway station the men, along with a couple of girls they met on the train, get out. Unfortunately the train leaves without them. Soon they find themselves being hunted by the cannibalistic tunnel dwellers. What is it about the subway that inspires filmmakers to imagine that they are haunted by flesh eating people? There has been any number of stories over the years, from Creep to Midnight Meat Train to lord knows what else. Now comes Stag Night and I'm left to wonder if there is any life left in the mini-genre. Frankly this is a tired retread of a film. We've been down this corridors before and the film adds nothing new. That would be fine if the film had any connection to reality, which it doesn't. The film was made in Sofia Bulgaria which looks nothing like New York. All of the subway stations are these huge cavernous rooms covered in graffiti that look unlike any I've ever seen in any location anywhere. Nothing feels real. Its not a bad film, but it should have been better. Clearly shooting in Sophia ruined any chance that the filmmakers could have created any sense of claustrophobia (and did I mention everything is much too well lit for abandoned tunnels). The cast is game, the script is kind of serviceable in a clichéd sort of way but the locations and some other technical aspects sink what would have been solid run of the mill film. I'd take a pass.

• Another disappointment

  aqos-12009-10-13

  Another failed horror movie. The story has been told many times in many ways. City folk find themselves in the world of the people that live under public transit. The first group they come to is uncivilized with no discernible speech, but they're well dressed against the cold. Of course they live off of human flesh, oddly in a trailer underground with electricity and TV. The bad guys have hand to hand battle weaponry of all shapes and sizes as well as pet dogs. This movie relied on the "lets shake the camera" method for shooting fight scenes. Naturally when they are being pursued, no one has the good sense to be quiet. They draw as much attention to themselves as possible, it seems. The city goers do some damage of their own, but mostly it damaged my hope that anyone knows how to make a good horror movie anymore.

• Under Achiever

  kosmasp2010-06-28

  There are some lines at the beginning of the movie (after the "initial" shock scene that is), that try to convince that this movie has a real background. Of course as with many other horror movies, this does not stay in our reality and has quite some major flaws in it's story telling. You just get enough background information on some of the guys (their relationship to each other), to know who is who. Beyond that there is nothing to really distinguish them (apart from the character that Breckin Meyers portrays, but never really achieves anything with, except from his first scenes). Actually, if you didn't know Breckin Meyer (which could be the case), you might be excused to not even really notice him and be completely irritated by his action(s) later as the movie progresses. Storytelling and character aren't really the backbones of this movie, but it has some nice/decent horror moments and some pretty good gore effects. Unfortunately some scenes are edited/shot as if the cameraman/editor had been under "influence". I'm not a big fan of the "shake the camera" and it will look frightening theory. Others might be, not me though. Decent, but nothing you really need to watch, unless you are into this sort of genre pictures (and even then there are so many other movies out there)