Founders Day
Back in the early 1980s, there was almost literally a new slasher movie every week. Halloween and Friday the 13th made that particular horror subgenre immensely popular. These days, we occasionally get a new one from a filmmaker who grew up watching and admiring those slashers. Eli Roth’s recent Thanksgiving shows how to pay homage to them correctly. Erik Bloomquist’s Founders Day shows how to completely screw up such an homage.
The story is set in a small town where the incumbent mayor, Blair Gladwell (Amy Hargreaves), is being challenged by businessman Harold Faulkner (Jayce Bartok). A celebration of the town’s founding fathers is supposed to be their opportunity to seal up votes, but it’s disrupted by a series of murders committed by a masked figure brandishing a gavel with a blade protruding from the bottom. Local teenager Allison Chambers (Naomi Grace) is the first to spot the slayer, who seems intent on targeting high school students.
There’s nothing about Founders Day that even remotely works. Problems start with the fact that the characters are unilaterally boring. Allison is supposed to be this movie’s version of Sidney Prescott from Scream, yet she’s bland as toast. An assortment of additional supporting characters, from a cynical schoolteacher to a goofy police deputy, clutter up the picture with their equally dull presence. Compounding matters is that the actors give performances that are either hammy or amateurish. There’s not a single halfway interesting piece of acting in the entire film.
The poor writing and leaden direction are even worse. Erik Bloomquist and his co-writer Carson Bloomquist, who also made She Came from the Woods, make the plot needlessly convoluted. There are points in the movie where I couldn’t tell you why certain characters are doing what they do. Motivations are hazy, and the way each person’s individual little drama connects to the overall slasher arc isn’t always clear. We also get too many of the typical horror movie cliches, including the one where the unmasked villain gives a long, self-aggrandizing speech instead of killing their last victim.
Scares are non-existent, despite several extremely bloody sequences. Jason Voorhees was avenging a childhood tragedy. Ghostface had a personal grudge against Sidney. Having a general idea of a slasher’s motivation is helpful. Founders Day doesn’t offer an explanation, thereby rendering the nameless killer not frightening. I suppose the red mask is mildly eerie. Beyond that, nothing.
Worst of all, the movie tries to toss in a political message at the end. What it has to say is completely obvious. Everybody knows political division in America is at an all-time high. This is not news. Attempting to insert topicality in this flaccid manner only underlines how half-baked Founders Day is. If you showed this film to Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Ghostface, they would point and laugh at how weak it is.
out of four
Founders Day is rated R for strong bloody violence, language, and some sexual references. The running time is 1 hour and 46 minutes.
