REVIEW : STAG NIGHT

STAG NIGHT

The mention of Stag Night’s usually brings memories of loud, obnoxious lads, boozing, strippers and rob zombie. Actually, very true, worryingly enough for myself. But this film brings all those things to the table with a twist of horror, of course the horror, this time at least, not coming from the strippers in the City Of Newcastle…Urg. (Although see Zombie Women Of Satan for Geordie Strippers)

Mike is about to get married to the lovely, but somewhat boring, Clare. But there is the obvious underlying tone that she is a bit of a bitch. Hmm. Anyways this results in the obvious Stag Night festivities in which the group of cliché’s finish off at a strip Club. We have the loud, take no shit from nobody, Tony, also brother to our hero, and the others, who are Best Friend Carl and bland boring Joe.

They are being ejected for hitting on some strippers and soon end up on the train home. But Tony, being as obnoxious as the cliché will allow him, sees the strippers they met at the bar and decides the night is not over. After a bit of banter and some misunderstandings involving the girls, Tony, an oncoming train and pepper spray in an enclosed space, the boys and the two strippers end up on an abandoned platform with their train leaving them behind. Carl being a bit of a ladies man decides that romancing the stripper is more important than any kind of escape and so the others head off down the tunnels to find a way out and get thier friends out.

Someway down the tunnel they come across a night security guard, only to see him brutally murdered by a gang of homeless people who I can only say look like Rob Zombie. Thus begins the nightmare as they are picked off one by one by the homeless that live in the tunnels beneath New York City.

I know, I moan, but the simple fact is that even with all its clichés and bad dialogue and forceful story pushing, Stag Night is actually a very watchable film, although with a terrible title font. Tony is played by Breckin Meyer, who some people will remember from teen comedy Road Trip and for the most part Meyer handles his performance with everything we need, even his change in character toward the end of the film isn’t too jarring.

Its well shot, but the pacing was not so much. I found myself at the end of the film feeling like I’d been there for a couple of hours when it was little over 1. There is also some bad dialogue and some very bad and unrealistic character decisions that just don’t sit right for me. Obviously they were placed to push the story forward, but I wasn’t buying it that a girl who had just attacked a bunch of guys with pepper spray would then leave with them into a dark tunnel without her only friend. Then again she was your usual ballsy, ain’t scared of no one, dark haired chick, so maybe I can excuse it. Or not.

The main problem with Stag Night is that it’s a great Idea that never reaches its full potential and hits us with such a tacked on ending that pulls the small amount of emotion from the films climax right out of you, leaving you like a bland guy on a stag night. Bored and frustrated.

OVERALL

Give Stag Night a watch, its worth a one time viewing and its got good production values, but then it did cost £4 Million to make so overall its not that impressive. Where did the money go we wonder and then we stop wondering as we realised it was used to develop technology to clone Rob Zombie.