Matinée starts in the small Canadian town of Holsten B.C. as it's annual horror film festival is taking place at the Paramount theatre, it's the big night of the premiere of 'Murder Camp Bad Blood' & the audience is in a frenzy as scenes of murder & mutilation (knowingly similar to the original Friday the 13th (1980)) are projected on screen for their entertainment. However one audience member named Kelly (Kerry Sandomirsky) has her evening ruined when she looks across at her boyfriend (Boyd McConnachie) & discovers that someone has stuck a great big knife straight through his throat... Jump forward 'Two Years Later' & Holsten is reviving it's horror film festival after it's years hiatus, Detective Al Jason (Ron White) is already receiving letter from concerned members of the public about it not being a good idea to restart the festival. Unfazed by both past & present events the theatre's manager Earle Gardener (Don S. Davis) pushes ahead with the festival & the premiere of 'Bad Blood II' but it's not long before lightening strikes twice & the dead bodies begin to pile up...
This Canadian production was written & directed by Richard Martin & is an average murder mystery at best. The script is a little on the slow side for my liking & doesn't seem able to decide whether it wants to be a homage to classic horror as it recreates various scenes from the likes of Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Psycho (1960) & a few other's as well as sticking lots of horror film posters up all over the theatre where the story takes place. Despite all these horror film references & nods Matinée is a cop thriller at heart as the murders are very few in number & aren't like those from your typical stalk'n'slash horror, there more restrained & there's a reason why people are killed in Matinée rather than there just being a psycho killer on the loose. The eventual identity of the killer isn't that surprising & I doubt much effort was put into their motives, it all seemed rather sedate & a bit dull. Matinée would probably have worked better as an hour long TV film rather than 90 plus minutes, it's one of those films that I don't think anything is particularly wrong with it but at the same time it didn't exactly impress me either & it's OK for what it is no more, no less.
Director Martin doesn't give the film any sort of life or style, it's all rather bland, flat & instantly forgettable. The character's are as you would expect for this type of film, the tough cop, the sleazy reporter trying to stir up trouble, the obvious suspect who you just know is innocent because everything points to him & the disposable teenage victims. Forget about any gore as there isn't any worth mentioning, Matinée is a very tame film.
Technically Matinée is a competently made-for-TV film but has all the blandness you would expect from such a production. The acting was OK but nothing spectacular, The X-Files (1993 - 2002) cigarette smoking man regular William B. Davis has a small role.
Matinée is an OK murder mystery film, it's more of a thriller than a horror film & has little that you would associate with the genre apart from the horror festival setting & the films that play on screen during them, for me that simply wasn't enough. Average at best, watch only if your desperate or your a fan of dull cop thrillers.
This Canadian production was written & directed by Richard Martin & is an average murder mystery at best. The script is a little on the slow side for my liking & doesn't seem able to decide whether it wants to be a homage to classic horror as it recreates various scenes from the likes of Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Psycho (1960) & a few other's as well as sticking lots of horror film posters up all over the theatre where the story takes place. Despite all these horror film references & nods Matinée is a cop thriller at heart as the murders are very few in number & aren't like those from your typical stalk'n'slash horror, there more restrained & there's a reason why people are killed in Matinée rather than there just being a psycho killer on the loose. The eventual identity of the killer isn't that surprising & I doubt much effort was put into their motives, it all seemed rather sedate & a bit dull. Matinée would probably have worked better as an hour long TV film rather than 90 plus minutes, it's one of those films that I don't think anything is particularly wrong with it but at the same time it didn't exactly impress me either & it's OK for what it is no more, no less.
Director Martin doesn't give the film any sort of life or style, it's all rather bland, flat & instantly forgettable. The character's are as you would expect for this type of film, the tough cop, the sleazy reporter trying to stir up trouble, the obvious suspect who you just know is innocent because everything points to him & the disposable teenage victims. Forget about any gore as there isn't any worth mentioning, Matinée is a very tame film.
Technically Matinée is a competently made-for-TV film but has all the blandness you would expect from such a production. The acting was OK but nothing spectacular, The X-Files (1993 - 2002) cigarette smoking man regular William B. Davis has a small role.
Matinée is an OK murder mystery film, it's more of a thriller than a horror film & has little that you would associate with the genre apart from the horror festival setting & the films that play on screen during them, for me that simply wasn't enough. Average at best, watch only if your desperate or your a fan of dull cop thrillers.
