Victoria Harkless
Assistant Editor-In-Chief
Unlike most people on Valentine’s day, I believe the best way to spend it is watching horror movies and getting scared. This Valentine’s Day, I watched a favorite movie of mine called Hell Fest. The 2018 film is a rated R movie available on Netflix.
The movie starts with naming all of the actors and giving them credit, and then it goes into a haunted house. It depicts a group of people talking and messing around until it takes a frightening turn when one of the girls gets separated. The separated girl runs into a man following the group, stabbing her and moving her body. It takes an even more sinister turn, and I will spare you those details.
The group consists of three boys (Gavin, Asher, and Quinn) and three girls (Brook, Taylor, and Natalie). Brooke and Quinn are dating, Taylor and Asher are dating, but Gavin and Natalie are only flirting.
There will be spoilers from here on for pretty much the rest of this article. They go to the festival and begin to drink. We see a man entering the gates though we never see his face. Once our group is seen discussing their plan for the night, we see the man put his hood on along with a mask and then steal a vendor’s knife.
We find out there are several parts of the festival ranging in how scary they are. The second scare zone is called “The Deadlands,” and they can touch you within that land. You must go through that to get into the scariest, which is “Hell.”
The scariest house outside of “The Deadlands” is called “Deform School,” where the group begins. The group goes through the second zone cracking jokes, but after a bit of messing around, the group is separated, leaving the girls where they see a girl running through the house begging for help before the man with the mask comes in.
Once they leave the house, the man follows them out. Natalie notices and is beginning to get scared, but the others are quick to dismiss her worrying. After a little bit of uneventful stuff, Natalie and Gavin enter a photo booth where they kiss, but the man steals their photos from before, and Brook chases him to a dark area.
The group splits up again, and Gavin goes off to win Natalie a stuffed toy. As the group signs liability waivers to get into “The Deadlands,”Gavin goes on a hunt for a stuffed animal, which he hears employees talking about being in the locker room. While he searches for a toy, we see a blurry shot of the man from before creeping in behind him. He reveals a large mallet, and I will save you the gory details, but he kills him with it. Antagonist One, main group Zero.
The group enters “The Deadlands” via ride, not knowing Gavin is dead as they continue to text his phone. While they are riding, the ride stops. When the alarm begins to sound, our favorite survivor girl (Natiale) spots the masked antagonist. He seems to be getting closer with each flash of the light until he is steadily walking closer . He ends up sitting on top of her cart on the way out. This scene is also important because it reveals several other people wearing the same mask and gives us the name of our antagonist, “The Other.”
The actors quite literally steal Taylor right out of their group after receiving a map. The first “Trail” splits the boys and girls up once again. We see the murderous Other enter the house from a side door.
As they go through the house, Asher is separated from Quinn, leaving him on his own. He is greeted by our Other, who stabs him in the eye with some tool: the Other two, our protagonist group, zero.
As they wait for their murdered friend, the group is sprayed with blood outside of the house. Again, the group splits up. The Other stocks her in the bathroom. She texts Gavin, and a phone goes off in the stall next to her. She brushes it off, and decides it is a coincidence until it happens again and the door begins to rattle. When they tell security, they say they can not do anything. They also find the pictures that had been stolen.
Taylor volunteers for an event separating herself from the group that had sense come back together and is taken in front of a crowd in an entertainment portion . Taylor has fun and plays with actors, even when it is said that she will pay for her sins “with her head.” They put her in a guillotine with the Other as the executioner. After the show, Taylor is struck with the guillotine but gets found by Quinn, but is ultimately stabbed while event- goers watch in horror. He also kills Quinn in that scene though it is one of the tamest deaths. That makes five for the Other and still zero for our last two.
Security gets someone they think is the murderous other, but it is the wrong actor, and the girls (Brook and Natalie) get chased into the final maze (Hell). Our girls hide in a closet while the Other goes through the house in search of them. Once he passes, they try to go through the front door to leave but find themselves trapped. In true survivor girl fashion, they decide they must go through the house and arm themselves with props to defend against The Other. Brooke gets hurt and Natilie has a hero moment and attacks the Other, but that leads them to split up. Natitalie finds The Other chasing a seriously injured Brooke. She stabs him, and the police show up to save the girls. The other is not found in the police search. We see him arrive home to a child, and he goes to a cabinet revealing several different masks as well as photos, and other memorabilia. Still, we never see his face or get an identity, and the movie ends.
I must say I enjoy this movie a lot. It is a solid 9/10, it is one of my favorite horror movies, and I highly suggest it. I do not mind the gore, though. I know it is not for everyone, though I believe the jokes make all of that worth it. Again, Hell Fest is available to stream at any time on Netflix. As of right now, there is no definitive removal date but, I suggest watching it while you can.
Image Credit: Jonathan Bowers on Unsplash
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