Night of the Slasher (2015, Short Film) Review

Night of the Slasher (2015) is a short film directed by Shant Hamassian. The film follows Jenelle, a teenage girl that must commit horror movie sins such as drink alcohol, do drugs, and have sex to lure a killer and finish him off. While the film is considered a horror/thriller short film, it is also quite funny. The way the film utilizes a meta approach to making fun of horror cliches while also respectfully tipping its hat to countless horror classics is incredibly clever.

The film has a runtime of 12 minutes which isn’t much, but what it accomplished in that time is surprising. Lily Berlina gives a solid performance as the main protagonist, Jenelle. She carries the film from beginning to end beautifully with very minimal dialogue. Night of the Slasher uses a single shot approach to film one continuous scene for the entire runtime of the movie. While Hamassian has come out and said he shot the film in one long take, it does utilize a suspicious amount of swish pans to transition scenes. I still am not convinced it is a single shot film. If it is, then kudos to the team! I am stumped trying to figure out how in one 3 second transition shot they managed to clean up a massive amount of blood on the floor. I would be interested to see a behind the scenes documentary or to hear a commentary track with director Shan’t Hamassian to better understand how he made the film.

Night of the Slasher is an incredibly well written and original short film. I enjoyed the meta approach it takes to make fun of horror cliches while also respectfully acknowledging some of the true horror classics. Some of the most clever camera work I have seen is paired with strong performances to create a film that I very much enjoyed. I give Night of the Slasher a 9 out of 10.

Night of the Slasher is available online for free at NightOfTheSlasher.com.