Really Surprised!

How sad is this?

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The pothead Zack (Greg Cipes); the sweethearts Kate (Margo Harshman) and Riff (Artie Baxter); the slut Vicky (Carrie Finklea); and the spoiled Ashley (Kelly Vitz) travel by van to the backwoods to camp. They meet two strange graveyard diggers that advise them to leave the place otherwise they could be murdered. Then they meet the deranged retarded Simon (Crispin Glover) in the gas station and Riff has a friction with the guy. They find a paradisiac spot to camp at the riverside, but Simon and Stanley transform their holiday in a nightmarish night."Simon Says" is another absurd and stupid slasher that follows the style of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Wrong Turn" and other films of this sub-genre of horror. Crispin Glover performs an annoying character that keeps saying "and you forgot to say…Simon says" (even in the end of the credits). But the most irritating in this story is the ability and invulnerability of his undestroyable character. My vote is three.Title (Brazil): "Siga o Mestre" ("Follow the Master")

You all know the drill. A quintet of college kids -- hunky stud muffin Riff (Artie Baxter), his snippy girlfriend Kate (a perfectly bitchy Margo Harshman), hot vampy slut Vicky (a deliciously naughty portrayal by Carrie Finklea), amiable stoner Zack (a hilariously goofy Greg Cipes), and naive goody-goody two shoes Ashley (Kelly Vitz) -- go camping in a remote neck of the woods. Since the kids smoke pot and make out, clearly they are destined to meet gruesome untimely ends. Of course, they run afoul of crazed hillbilly psycho Stanley and his dim-witted brother Simon. Writer/director William Dear relates the story at a steady pace, really pours on the over-the-top splatter with the amusingly outrageous and imaginative murder set pieces (grisly highlights include one victim being turned in a human CD player, some wicked pick-ax mayhem, and Zack being turned into a giant reefer), and further spices things up with a delightfully twisted sense of pitch-black gallows humor (Stanley's elaborate Rube Goldberg-style deadly contraptions are very funny in an admittedly sick sort of way). Best of all, the one and only Crispin Glover has himself a field day in the juicy dual role of Simon and Stanley: Sporting a strange voice that alternates between a shrill whine and an overripe Southern accent, doing all these twitchy mannerisms with histrionic abandon, making all these groaningly cruddy Simon says puns, and even stomping on a cute little poodle in one particularly great scene, Glover is a total wacky hoot to watch. Both Bryan Greenberg's slick cinematography, Ludek Drizhal's shuddery, spirited score, and the pleasingly grim ending are all up to par as well, but it's Glover's marvelously manic and unrestrained eye-rolling hambone acting which gives this flick an extra nutty edge. Good, cheesy fun.

It took me some 30 minutes before I realized that I shouldn't take this movie too seriously. Not that there wasn't anything to smile about from the start. There's the usual bunch of teenage friends (the horny jock, the luscious bimbo, the preppy mona lisa, the airhead dork, etc.), it's ludicrous enough that we always take such an improbable pairing of girls and boys for granted, but they provide us with the usual wannabe funny stuff, like vulgar jokes, dumb one-liners and fooling around with each other. But when the killings began, it was as if everything turned dead-serious, probably because of the dark atmosphere and the crazy killing-mechanisms (like some mechanical contraption that propels axes through the air like a tennis ball canon) and the rather gloomy flash-backs that introduced us to the killer-twins as infants. But once we meet Simon (or IS it Simon???) and actor Crispin Glover drawls his lines in a blatant piece of over-acting, it suddenly dawned on me: it's supposed to be FUN!! Everything that follows turns out as way over-the-top: the more-than-graphic kills, the extreme gore and the rapidly mounting body-count (enhanced by some amateur soldiers that appear in the movie totally out-off-the-blue, just to get themselves immediately killed).I have to admit that I found it all very entertaining, as long as you don't use your brain and just go for the ride in this really fast and gory machine. Because, lets face it: the story was totally incomprehensible, I didn't know who the hell we dealt with (Simon or Stanley or maybe both???) and I couldn't have cared less. The teenagers were all extremely annoying (although air-headed Zack turns out to be a posthumous hero in the end) and there were numerous potholes in the script. I mean: how come this Simon (with or without his brother) is evidently for years on the loose, while killing off anyone who sticks his head into his little shop?! Wouldn't someone (the police for instance, to make a wild suggestion) by now have come to check for the countless missing persons? Anyway, there's a lot in favor of this movie too. I you like hefty gore, this is your thing, the special effects are absolutely great and I was really stunned by the wonderful photography, the brightness of the colors, even in the night-scenes, is remarkable!! The kids are mostly good looking, the jock has a great physique (and is allowed to show it), and Crispin Glover is… well, is Crispin Glover, he's not exactly my cup of tea, but he sure as hell makes a convincing weirdo! In the obligatory last scene where we learn that the story will repeat itself for ever and ever, a group of new friends come to the little shop as fresh meat for Simon, and be sure to check out this bare-chested guy, who's totally awesome. What a shame that the movie stopped right there and then!

When I saw all these positive comments and talk about different movie I was expecting something similar to what Scream did for slasher genre or something like it. Boy was I disappointed.Granted movie does have and interesting and unconventional opening but then it falls for every horror cliché around. Location, obviously. Middle of nowhere, woods. Characters are your typical group of teenagers. We don't know why they choose to camp there, we don't know who they are or practically anything about it. And you have your typical tight girl, your "friendly" girl, stoner/funny guy and so on. And of course the typical "I know there is something weird going on around here but instead of turning around and running away I'll keep poking around so I'll find bodies and body parts." While first such case is somewhat understandable the second one is beyond dumb.Then we have death scenes. Not that gory but between dumb and impossible. When you think about them a bit you realize this is just not possible.The ending is interesting, I'll give them that but one good moment simply can't fix overall bad impression this movie makes.Avoid if possible