Now as comedies go, this is a little light in the yen, but as horror goes, this is pretty good. This actually manages to succeed in the tension and atmosphere it sets out to convey and I actually liked much of the horror material, it's just too bad it doesn't take itself more seriously as horror because there's some good stuff here including the tripped out black hood the killer wore that was actually pretty cool to look at and his pretty cool machete blade he hacked the people with. All the while, I found myself giving a crap about who might be the killer and throughout the material that didn't work, I hoped for the material that did work to eventually show itself and the horror worked well because the killer was interesting to look at.

Recently, there was "Shaun of the Dead", one of the only really good movies able to perfectly combine horror and comedy into a well crafted mold and hybrid. Many times there are horror comedies and comedy horrors, and "Club Dread" never really knows what it wants to be, and only manages to achieve a very uneven mixture of comedy and
horror, almost as if the writers are tussling with its own concept during the writing of the script. The writers never know if they're trying to write horror with comedy, or a comedy with horror elements. So the end product is very odd and awkward in its delivery and it's never sure what it is in the end, so you're never sure what you've just seen.

There's a two part spectrum to this movie, there's the horror element and then there is the comedy element, both very odd and unfortunate because it shows that the comedy and horror never mix well enough to be considered whole, but then again, this is from the same people created "Super Troopers", a film that went from very funny to really crappy halfway through, and how they got Brian Cox in that film, well that's an enigma for the ages, but either way, there are two sides from this movie, the comedy and horror. For comedy purpose this is just no good because it's never funny, even in certain sequences with the characters fighting, some gay gags, and sex jokes and whatnot that never register and there was even the joke like Uncle Pete's unknown song "Pina Coladaburg" which was deemed a rip-off of Margaritaville which was still only a very mild attempt at humor and seemed to desperately cling for a bit of laughter from the audience who
would only really get it for a second and they really stretch out the gag for a long time.

There is a lot of over the top stuff here including the characters including the hindu guy with dreadlocks who has a British accent, and the character who could make people orgasm or piss with one touch on a certain point of the body, all a lot of really desperate and bland attempts at humor. How the Broken Lizard people are able to bait people like Brian Cox and Bill Paxton is amazing, because their material isn't that original. We have a movie spoofing cops on the job, been done, we have a film spoofing slasher films, been done, and this has been done with so much of a better method before than this.

This seems to be a comedy within a horror film within a comedy and I could never be certain what I was watching, even with Bill Paxton's damn over the top performance as Uncle Pete the crusty Sammy Hagarth, Eddie Money, Jimmy Buffet hybrid who loves to party, and not even Paxton could save the film from his annoying and god-awfully unfunny performance. Then there's the horror which is a mixture of a whodunnit and a slasher film with a killer that walks around in both a very cool hood and a really cheesy voodoo mask for parts of the film that never made any sense.

As a horror there's nothing to see here, nothing really all that watchable and nothing worth caring for because this also spoofs the horror. So we have a comedy in a horror in a comedy satirizing the horror. Confusing isn't it? It sure was, and the writers couldn't discern what they were trying to do, so you're never sure if you should take the horror seriously, or expect a laugh or the comedy with humor expecting horror because the writers are never sure what movie they're writing and we're never sure what movie we're watching.

As a comedy this is plenty weak with doses of attempted farce and comedy that never work and never succeed in invoking laughter, but as a slasher, this works pretty well in the over-the-top fashion of mystery, suspense, and tension. Lame, but entertaining.

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