Directed By Josh Stolberg

Starring – Bryce Hall, Abigail Killmeier, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson

The Plot – Ten online influencers are lured into a content house and forced to compete in social media challenges, because in Skillhouse, clout isn’t just currency, it’s survival.

This film is currently not rated

Skillhouse Official Trailer | In Theatres July 11

POSITIVES

Commending anything about this movie feels like mission impossible, but there are some touches with the production that prove some personality for the movie, particularly the presentational visuals, which effectively emit the feeling of watching an online broadcast. Between text and graphics meant to convey who is still alive in this competition, and fuzzily grainy textures within the movie’s cinematography, the presentation has a way, for better or worse, of naturally conveying the kind of personality that the movie goes for in its campy enveloping, and while it’s merely surface level for a film that never digs deeper with its concept or characters, it proves the minimal budget is explored fruitfully on-screen in every colorfully chaotic creation, rendering a uniqueness to the experience that appraises an immersive value alongside the outside world who watches the cutthroat mentalities pursued within these influencers. Beyond the visuals, the only other praise that I can give to the movie is in the potential of its concept, which sees these shallowly detestable social media personalities fighting for survival in the most degradingly desperate means. While the overall execution leaves plenty to be desired, the set-up at least kept me interested in a therapeutic kind of way, for my own personal distaste of these self-promoting shills who brand themselves without anything in the way of legitimate talent to market their brand, and I think in the right hands with a big studio backing the efforts, this film could’ve succeeded on its own merits, but unfortunately it’s a lifeless shell of its limitless possibilities, leading to what is easily my worst film of the year so far.

NEGATIVES

In a summer full of satisfyingly entertaining blockbusters, a movie like “Skill House” comes along to ground audience expectations with an experience that grows all the more frustratingly dull, the longer that it persists throughout an 85-minute runtime, existing purely to pride itself along the so-bad-they’re-good films of the contemporary horror age, but without any semblance of originality to its execution. While there is plenty wrong with this screenplay, the derivative emphasis of the material is the most glaring, with the conflict shamelessly emulating the “Saw” franchise, with similar lines practically plucked from Jigsaw’s mouth, while the movie’s climax mirrors the original “Scream”, almost beat for beat in set-up and follow through. If this isn’t enough, the characters, if you can call them that, exist purely as types, instead of living, breathing entities that we come to learn about, with the main protagonist, a black man, a gay man, an Asian woman, a blonde bitch, and a beautiful bimbo being among the personalities that you’re ultimately saddled with. As previously mentioned, there could be a therapeutic purpose to watching these ignorant people offed one by one, if done methodically by Stolberg’s direction, but they’re enacted so annoyingly irredeemable in the majority that it’s an arduous task to even want to spend ten minutes alongside them, before death eventually comes for all of them, with this gratingly gratuitous emphasis towards online terminology that made me groan aloud amongst similarly frustrated moviegoers, feeling like the summarization of an aging hipster’s experience trying to understand the youth of today. The script goes out of its way to continuously establish the stakes and circumstances of those affected, and then drops the concept almost entirely by the film’s midway point, where it puts aside the thrill of competition for a duo of twists pertaining to the killer’s identity that I smelled coming from the film’s first few minutes. The cast themselves lack any semblance of distinguished personality or presence to captivate anything endearing to their respective portrayals, deviating between flatly uncommitted deliveries that lack any semblance of punchy influence, and overly melodramatic registries that humiliates each of them to feeling like they saw this as an opportunity to win an Academy Award, instead of the C-movie crap that it almost immediately established itself as. The movie does feature celebrity cameos like 50 Cent, MMA fighter Paige Van Zant, or the energetically inebriated of them, Neal McDonough, but they’re each going through the motions of what it means to pursue nothing other than a paycheck opportunity, and considering 50 Cent’s, a producer on the film, paycheck was spent suing the production, in order for the movie to never see the light of day, it tells you everything that you need to know about the kind of quality contained in such an abomination. Speaking of quality, the production is filled with bountiful blunders that serve as a glaring distraction to its budgetary limitations, instead of something artistically punctual to the purpose of the film, featuring some of the worst artificial and even practical effects work that I have seen in a horror movie involving even a singular ounce of ambition. Sometimes this pertains to wounds being graphically imposed to a character’s limb, almost feeling a projector flashing over them, with Microsoft Paint levels of C.G blood deposits, and other times it pertains to make-up and prosthetics that not only lack believability in the lack of detail to their designs, but also continuity in the ways they magically move between what is obviously two run-throughs of the same shot pasted together, to make one cohesive sequence. The kills themselves do occasionally attain creativity in the concept of Jigsaw…errr Triller Killer’s traps, but they’re directed in such a lifelessly limber way that can’t elevate the prolonged suspense or atmospheric terror of the established situation, summoning these disjointed and abruptly executed sequences that couldn’t summon a shred of shock or satisfaction to a horror hound like me. Stolberg’s direction also feels conflicted by the kind of movie that he’s going for, with half of it feeling like a campy slasher that abides by the rules of being intentionally awful, while the other side of the climax plays things a bit too sternly serious in attempting to reach for audience-conceived emotions, and considering the humor fails by feeling too meanspirited, and the horror never attains a preconceived urgency to the plight of these protagonists, it simply feels like we’re biding our time before the big reveal, making this feel like a surface level idea, instead of a thought-provoking thematic exploit on the toxicity of online celebrity that could’ve at least given us substance to chew on, in between amateur hour. Finally, and most deserving of a section of its own, the editing serves as the audience’s primary antagonist, with these continuous transitions to a previous scene that I guess exist to fill in the gaps for people who walk out of the room or fail to pay attention. For those of us who actually did pay attention, the visuals inspire constant reminder each time the characters mention a previous death, with these artistically jarring cutaways that feel like the scene where Joker makes over Harley Quinn in David Ayer’s “Suicide Squad”, and considering this framing device overstays its welcome by the third time it exploits it, around the movie’s ten minute mark, overall it grinded the momentum of the movie’s pacing to a screeching halt, to a film that doesn’t even clock in at the conventional 90-minute mark, with a rushed consistency to the storytelling that simultaneously feels like too much and not enough is transpiring on-screen before us.

OVERALL
“Skill House” is an unfunny, unscary corpse of a campy slasher meant to tap into the toxicities of social media celebrity but squanders any semblance of compelling commentary with an execution that egregiously alienates its audience with uninspired techniques and overwhelming derivativeness. While there is an outline of a compelling idea buried deep beneath the movie’s compromisingly cheap production values and woodenly lifeless acting, there isn’t enough skill under one roof to justify the agony of the extent, leaving a lack of foundation to a house that deserves to be condemned.

My Grade: 1.8 or F