There’s been a murder.

A young woman has been murdered and her friends, who are all kind of in mourning but not really, have retreated to a villa near London.  The villa is owned by one of their mothers, who is very Italian.  She is also very protective of her son and hopeful that she can teach him and his friend some proper etiquette lessons.  To accomplish this, she has invited a TikTok etiquette expert to come lecture the group.  (The expert turns out to be an alcoholic.)

Needless to say, the majority of the group is not interested in learning about etiquette.  They want to drink.  They want to party.  Some of them want to have sex.  Lily (Eleanora Bindi) is interested in the villa’s reputation for being haunted and she especially has an eye for Charles (Christian Vit), the enigmatic and taciturn groundskeeper.  Mostly, everyone just wants to have a wild weekend …. including the stranger in the mask who not only killed their friend but who has apparently followed them to the villa!

Released this year, Behave is one of the most mind-numbingly boring films that I’ve ever seen.  For a slasher film that doesn’t even run for longer than 80 minute, it’s an amazingly talky film.  Being talky is not necessarily a bad thing for a horror film, as long as the characters are interesting and the dialogue is witty.  It also helps if the cast is talented enough to hold your interest even when they’re just sitting around and shooting the breeze.  Unfortunately, Behave doesn’t have any of that.  The characters are all so thinly drawn and their conversations are so entirely devoid of wit that listening to them try to communicate is the equivalent of torture.  One gets the feeling that this movie could be used to force people to confess to committing crimes that they didn’t actually commit because it would be preferable to go to prison than to listen to another line of the film’s dialogue.

What’s behind the talkiness that seems to have infected so many recent low-budget horror films?  Personally, I blame the drawn-out television shows and miniseries that dominate the streaming era.  People have become so used to shows that are full of filler and which take forever to actually go anywhere that the pleasure of a well-paced story is in danger of becoming a distant memory.  When even a 79-minute film like this one features scenes of people talking about things that have nothing to do with the overall plot, it’s obvious that there’s a problem.

The killer shows up throughout the film, though mostly mostly just so it can stand outside of a window and look …. well, not really menacing.  We don’t actually see the killer in action until about 65 minutes into the film.  For a slasher film, that’s way too long to wait.  If the filmmakers wanted to make an indie comedy-drama about a bunch of friends spending the weekend at a villa, that’s what they should have done.  If you’re going to make a horror movie, you have an obligation to work in some scares before your movie is nearly over.

Anyway, boring film.