“ Night of the Reaper ” is a retro slasher from Baby-Sitter with a mystery touch

Reaper night Starts with a familiar Slasher film script: a baby-sitter hunted down by a killer. The masked threat makes a great demonstration of playing with it, leaving scary notes that almost feel like a farce until the danger becomes too real.

It is a bizarre opening sequence that signals the director and co -director Brandon Christensen (Still / Born, Z) Is well familiar with the horror tropes in which his film is looking at – and you can say that he knows that his audience will also pick them up.

Reaper nightThe main reference point is, of course, HalloweenThe mother vessel of all the horror films of the Baby-Sitter. It took place in the early 1980s – the era of Pat Benatar Bangers on MTV – a little later than the 1978s Halloween. But the progress of a few years means access to slightly more advanced technologies, in particular camcorders, a key route and stylistic influence. The opening credits crackle with static “follow -up” lines and the VHS bands are important throughout.

The main events of the film pick up a little time after the disappearance of the Baby-Sitter. We meet the main character Deena (Gen VJessica Clement) while she was walking in a calm bundy street with Halloween decorations; The electronic score also underlines the comparisons Laurie Strode. Deena’s house of the University, conscientiously having what is clearly a tense visit with her parents. When her best best school, which still lives in their hometown, falls ill, Deena agrees to help her by intervening to look at the young son of the local sheriff for the night.

We left, the spectator could assume – and indeed, Reaper night seems to set up a similar spell for Deena as the girl in the opening scene. But there is also a parallel scenario to relax, while the Sheriff Arnold (Ryan Robbins) begins to receive packages which lead him on a macabre treasure hunt.

It seems more than possible than the one who killed the girl in the opening is back for more sinister taunts. Arnold pointed out at one point: “Someone is trying to tell me something.” But exactly what this message is (and which sends it) Reaper nightis the central mystery.

As Reaper night Progress, tension and terror are built in both stories. Deena’s concert by looking at the little max (Max Christensen) moves from a fun game of hide and seek to an climbing of terror while the doors open slowly, the objects are rearranged by invisible hands, and a dark silhouette hides in the woods just beyond the courtyard.

The Sheriff Arnold, on the other hand, is freely committed to a conduct without professional without his jaw while it perplexes a series of clues together, especially once he realizes that the cold affair of the baby-sitter is not the only crime on the table. There are also clues in another death in the recent past which is much more personal to him.

To share more on the twists and turns of the plot that would follow a large part of what makes Reaper night Pleasant, but it is not a spoiler to say that it is more a horror that, let’s say, something that drags her heroine of Babysitting in Wild Devil’s house territory.

Halloween is the main influence here, but the horror of the foot found also makes its mark, just like the other series of Slasher, including Shout. If the final revelations become a little too talking when Christensen presents himself to explain everything that came before, you must appreciate the effort to fill as many whites as possible.

Exceptional performance in distribution comes from Clement as an ingenious Deena, as well as Summer H. Howell – to be considered Carrie White in Mike Flanagan’s Carrie Series – which draws the best party from his short time as the first victim.

Reaper night Streams we tremble from today, September 19.

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