Alice In Murderland (2010)

Alice In Murderland is a pretty terrible film. It contains everything that makes me despair about both slasher movies and also the rise of low-budget film-making. Because we live in a great time for people who want to make movies. Anyone can make a movie. Seriously, anyone. Not only is the price of decent equipment getting lower and lower, but it's actually possible to make an entire movie on your phone if you know what you're doing (oh yes, it's been done). But, remember, in the words of Dr. Ian Malcolm, sometimes people have often been "so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

Writer-director Dennis Devine is one of those people who shouldn't really have been allowed to waste his limited resources in creating a film like this. It's crude (in an audio and visual sense), it's often quite dull and it doesn't even deliver the requisite gratuitous gore and/or nudity, an implicit promise that a movie of this ilk should at least deliver good on.

Malerie Grady plays Alice, a young woman who is thrown a themed birthday party by her friends. The theme is Alice In Wonderland, and the location of the party is the same house in which Alice's mother died many years ago. Because nothing says birthday bash like the memories of a murdered mother. To the surprise of nobody viewing the film, people start to get murder-death-killed and the rest of the party-goers remain blissfully unaware of the situation for an unbelievably long time.

As surprising as it may seem, Alice In Murderland isn't without some minor plus points. Despite my negativity in the above paragraphs, I have to admit that it tries to get the pacing right (although it doesn't quite manage it) and it has some humour throughout. Lame humour that will make most people groan, but humour nonetheless.

Malerie Grady, Marlene Mc'Cohen, Kelly Kula, Katie Locke O'Brien, Heath Butler, Jennifer Field, Kim Argetsinger and all of the other ladies onscreen are very pretty, albeit far from the best actresses to appear in such slasher fare. Christopher Senger is the main male presence, he's also not that great in the acting department but he gives off a Tobias Funke vibe for most of the movie, which makes him more entertaining to watch than he otherwise would be.

The gore effects are another source of amusement - at one point I am pretty sure I just watched a woman lie on the floor with some pasta 'n' sauce slapped over part of her face - and nothing ever happens to make you forget that you're watching a production that probably struggled to provide catering for the cast and crew.

Alice In Murderland is horrible, but it manages to entertain here and there for all the wrong reasons. Which saves it from being among the worst of the many movies I have watched in my square-eyed life.

3/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alice-Murderland-DVD-Malerie-Grady/dp/B004OQJSL8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379674893&sr=8-1&keywords=alice+in+murderland