Steve Goltz is quickly becoming one of my favorite indie directors working today. One of the creators of Slasher Studios, he and his group know slasher movies and when they deliver their own original slashers, they have a ball with classic tropes of the sub-genre that feel new. After their pleasing revenge slasher “Teddy,” Goltz delivers one of the more unique and engrossing entries of the sub-genre I’ve seen in years. While it’s true Goltz and writer Kevin Sommerfield provide their nods and winks to classic eighties slasher films, “Don’t Go to the Reunion” works to the beat of its own drum, delivering kills aplenty, and a very interesting whodunit mystery.
Working very much in the vein of “Slaughter High,” the prologue is set in 2004 at Hamilton High, where we meet Scott, a class nerd who is obsessed with horror movies. A jealous and vindictive group of popular kids in school pull a prank on him where the leader Erica plants a knife and fake death threat in his locker, prompting Josh to be expelled. “Don’t Go to the Reunion” could very well be set in the eighties, but Goltz and Sommerfield are smart to play with the entire hysteria involving Columbine and school murders, which was still a very volatile and sensitive issue in 2004. Ten years later the group leader Erica has left her home town and is now involved with a steady boyfriend. Stricken with guilt and remorse from her vicious prank, she struggles to lead a normal life. That is until she receives a notice for a class reunion at a local cabin.
At the behest of her boyfriend, Erica meets up with her old group of friends, and surely enough, nothing has changed. Though not as demented as “Slaughter High,” director Steve Goltz really does build on characters to show the horror of the murderer lurking in the dark, and the horror of being incapable of letting go of the past. The group, now ten years older, have found it impossible to grow up and find some meaning in their lives, as their prank affected them more than either of them are willing to admit. Stephanie Leigh Rose gives a great performance as the ex-alpha bitch Erica, who has fought tooth and nail to forget her past and displays genuine remorse for her prank. When she realizes the group has been set up and are being violently murdered one by one, her distress is ever more harrowing than ever.
Sommerfield’s writing paired with Rose’s performance are able to turn Erica in to a very sympathetic yet flawed individual who we want to see survive, if only to see how a simple prank can have lasting effects. Though the finale does become a bit too on the nose for what is a subtle and well paced slasher for the first half, “Don’t Go to the Reunion” has its heart firmly placed in the eighties, with the systematic deaths of characters, vicious murders mimicking slasher films, and the big reveal that’s just so damn effective and clever. “Don’t Go to the Reunion” is a definite indie gem deserving of a wider audience, if only for its ability to pay tribute to the eighties, without making it an unbearable aesthetic. Goltz and Sommerfield really do know how to draw well fleshed out and interesting characters, and in the end I was very interested in finding out who the killer was, and how it would all come crashing down. I really can’t wait to see what the team of Steve Goltz and Kevin Sommerfield do next.