It’s open season on frat boy douchebags in 2010’s Hellweek!

And seriously, who’s going to complain about that?  Seriously, I’ve watched a lot of low-budget slasher films and I’m usually willing to cut them a lot of slack, especially when it comes to the generic characters who tend to populate them.  I mean, that’s just the genre.  Most of the money in the budget is going to go to fake blood and plastic body parts.  The gore comes first in movies like this because the gore is what people are going to remember.  For the most part, the casts of these films are made up by either regional actors or complete amateurs.  Sometimes, they’re likeable and I always appreciate that.  But, at the same time, I’m not going to make a big deal out of a less-than-compelling performance in a low-budget slasher film.  That said, Hellweek featured some of the most repellent characters that I’ve ever seen.  Seriously, this is a movie where one guy loudly announces, “It’s pussy time!” before jumping on a bed.  It’s a movie where two other guys say, “Let’s go talk to these cumbuckets,” while at a party.  This film features some of the least likable characters that I’ve ever seen.  Of course, most of them end up dying but still….

The killers in this particular film are a family of inbred hillbillies, who all wear masks and kill anyone stupid enough to enter the warehouse that they call home.  “Let’s show her some Southern hospitality!” the patriarch of the family announces at one point.  One member of the family wears a clown mask and plays an organ.  Another jumps up and down and claps whenever someone is being tortured.  They’re not really a family that you would want to live next to, though for a bunch of weirdos roughing it in an abandoned warehouse, they’re clothes were remarkably clean.  This isn’t like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where you looked at the family and automatically imagined the odor of sweet, blood, and chicken feathers.  Instead, you look at the family and you wonder which local community theater donated the costumes.

It takes a while for the film’s victims to make their way to the warehouse.  Nearly the entire first hour is padding, with the frat boys arguing amongst themselves and with their girlfriends.  One of the girlfriends describes a disturbing dream that she had.  Another has a flashback to a murder that happened when she was younger.  They argue amongst each other.  They go to boring parties.  They have too much to drink.  At one point, they visit a psychic.  It doesn’t really add up to much because it’s just there to pad out the running time.

The second hour (and this film runs for an unwieldy 117 minutes) is an improvement on the first, if just because the killers show up and finally give the plot some sort of direction.  Again, this is a low-budget film and it’s obvious that the majority of the budget was spent on the gore.  Some of it is effectively icky.  Some of it is so obviously fake that I couldn’t help but laugh once I looked up from the pillow I was hiding behind.  The warehouse is an effectively creepy location so I’ll give the film some credit for that.  I’ll give it another point for featuring a lead character whose hair was red just like mine.

Overall, Hellweek is forgettable, even by the low-budget slasher standards.