I love horror movies. I always have. When I was a kid I’d love to sneak out and watch the late show knowing full well that I’d be frightened and thrilled. I’ve seen all sorts of horror films, good and bad and even so bad they’re good films. But it angers me to find a movie that takes money that could have been better spent on a half decent film wasted on a piece of drek like FALL DOWN DEAD.
If the fact that it was cliché filled were all I might be more forgiving. But this movie has it all when it comes to bad. Bad directing, bad acting, bad writing…just bad.
The story revolves around Christie Wallace (Dominique Swain), a waitress in an all night diner working hard to save up money so she can move out of the city with her daughter. At the same time we have a concurrent tale going on about a serial killer who takes his victims and uses body parts from them in his attempt to create a piece of “art” played by Udo Kier.
After work on Christmas Eve, Christie accidentally comes across Kier and his latest victim staked out on top of a dumpster and sliced and diced. He sees Christie and immediately decides she has the perfect skin for his masterpiece and attempts to kill her as well. Instead, she drops her purse (oops so much for anonymity) and runs for the nearest building.
She convinces the bumbling night watchman (David Carradine completely wasted here) to let her in. They call for help but the two cops are on hand just moments before the power goes out in the building. For some reason the power has been going out all over town in various spots. Okay, I can get this point in the summer with air conditioners and all but Christmas Eve power outages? Come on.
The killer is in the building and it isn’t long before he starts trying to rack up a victim count. A couple of cheating spouses on an upper floor are brought downstairs and that’s when the killer starts.
There is the slim possibility of a story here and one that could be scary. Instead we have long winded meandering conversations between characters that we don’t get to know and actually don’t care about. It’s as if the writer thought “Hey, Kevin Smith gets kudos for having great dialogue, I think I’ll do it here”, never realizing that there must be a certain amount of action in a horror film as well. To cap it off the few action scenes there are with Kier make you wonder how a geriatric serial killer has the ability to catch people let alone take them on when facing them.
This is one of those movies that even when watched with your finger on the fast forward button you’re bored. Far too predictable and far to long winded to be enjoyed on any level. Avoid this one at all costs.
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