SLEDGEHAMMER

Sledgehammer Movie Review

A woman runs off to a cabin with her secret lover and 8-year-old child. Somebody then kills the adults with a sledgehammer. Ten years later, a group of people party in the same house--I usually say "group of youngsters", or "group of young people", as that is what we have more often than not in these movies, but this group looks to be at least in their late twenties, if not into their thirties; however, they act like teenagers, so I don't know how to accurately describe them. That is just one of the many oddities in this 1983 film that looks like it was shot on a home camcorder--if you were born after the 1980's came to an end and have no idea what I am talking about, here goes...long before everybody carried around cell phones and thought it necessary to take pictures of every aspect of their mundane life and share them with the world, people had home video cameras that were generally only brought out during holidays, birthdays, or other special events, and used largely to not only capture those special moments, but also make people feel very uncomfortable while being recorded--a long way from going to landmarks around the world and instead of capturing the landmark itself, positioning the camera dead center on your own mug and hamming it up while the landmark becomes nothing more than a blur in your backdrop, all in hopes of impressing complete strangers. The cameras were big, bulky, but most importantly, they got the job done.

And they looked like this

I'm not sure why, but I find homemade/no budget movies from decades prior to the 2000's much more bearable than those of more recent years--I theorize it's because they were shot on actual tape instead of digitally. Anyway, this movie is an absolute train wreck of a project. If you have read many of my movie reviews, you will know there is one thing I truly despise in movies...okay, there's a lot I hate about movies, but one thing that really irritates me is the use of slow motion, and practically everything in this movie is in slow motion. There is even one scene that shows two of the characters going for a walk--literally nothing else happens in this scene, but we have to endure it that much longer because the entire scene is in slow motion! Needless to say, if they are going to present this in slow motion, we are also going to receive our action in the same format...and that we do, all the way up to the final battle. There is also an extended scene of a guy playing guitar...nothing else. Just a dude and his guitar. As you would expect in a horror film, there's lots of screaming--this isn't when people are being killed in this movie, however. No no, this is during truly exciting moments such as a guy eating a sandwich, others chugging beer, and an intense food fight. I'm not sure there was actual scripted dialogue during the party scenes, as all the characters talk over each other--not that any of them were likely saying anything important. Then there's the lighting--dear readers, I am going to give you a free lesson in movie making. This lesson is with lighting. When lighting is done right, it's something the viewer doesn't think about or acknowledge consciously. It is often taken for granted, but lighting plays a much more important role in production than most realize. When the audience notices the lighting, you know something went wrong, and in this movie, the lighting sticks out like a sore thumb. We see shadows of not only the characters on screen, but also of those waiting for their cue to enter the shot, and of various crew members and their gear. If you are making a movie and you don't land any other technical aspect upon initial shooting, at least make sure you get the lighting right. Class dismissed. 

What are we seeing here?

The fun doesn't end there. We know the kid is the one who killed the adults at the start, but the movie alludes to this maybe not being the case before saying "yeah, okay, he did it"...but then it gets really weird. The kid is now a giant who looks like Franklin from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre wearing one of those cool, clear faces you find at Halloween stores...but he can shape-shift back into his child form, and seems impervious to pain...until he's not. This may have been explained near the end when the child version of our killer speaks, but apparently the director forgot to tell the kid to take the marbles out of his mouth before shooting, as whatever he says is unintelligible. I would say the acting is bad, but I'm sure you assume that already. Unfortunately, all this makes this movie sound much more entertaining than it is--cutting out abut 20 minutes of nothing at all happening would have done wonders for this movie, and may have thrust it into the "So Bad It's Good" hall of fame. What we end up with is a boring, technical disaster that is just entertaining enough to keep you watching until the end. 

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 4

Sledgehammer Movie Trailer