Initiation review – campus horror is more bore than gore
Here’s a trashy, slashy horror movie that takes the issue of sexual assault on campus, removes a few layers of complexity and adds a masked serial killer armed with a power drill. It begins at a frat house party where alpha-scumbag Beau (Gattlin Griffith) sets his aim with sniper precision at Kylie (Isabella Gomez), the drunkest, most-eager-tofit-in of the new sorority intake. Beau offers to take her to the upstairs bathroom; instead he guides her into his bedroom with another guy, Wes (Froy Gutierrez), and locks the door.
The next day Kylie tells sorority president Ellery (Lindsay LaVanchy) that she thinks she might have been assaulted. The frat boys tag her as a “slut” on social media. (Irritatingly, the characters’ messages and social feeds are constantly pinging up on the screen.) Ellery, a science major, takes the investigation into her own hands at the DNA lab where she works part-time.
Meanwhile, a masked psychopath turns up on campus, stalking and killing the suspected perpetrators and anyone else who might be complicit. The kills get boring very quickly; I’ve seen cheesegrater injuries that were more grisly.
And perhaps the biggest shocker here is that these kids are glued to their phones 24/7, but not one of them manages to dial 911 in time.
The procedural side of things is pretty hopeless. The script throws out half a dozen creepy male characters, any one of whom could be the killer. There’s Ellery’s socially awkward incel-y boss at the lab (Maxwell Hamilton), and the college principal (Lochlyn Munro), who’s hushed up previous allegations. What about that nice cop (Jon Huertas) – doesn’t he maintain eye contact for a split second too long? The unmasking of the killer at the end is completely nonsensical in what is essentially a perpetrator-focused film; Kylie, the alleged victim, gets a couple of scenes, necessary for the plot, but otherwise, there’s practically zero interest in what she’s going through.
• Initiation is released on 24 May on digital platforms.