Thursday, December 23, 2010

Silent Night, Deadly Night Pt.4 : The Initiation (1990)

Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 : The Initiation
Dir: Brian Yuzna (Bride of re0Animator/Beyond Re-Animator/The Dentist 1+2)
Starring: Clint Howard (Ice Cream Man/Waterboy/Rock and Roll Highschool)

So with the Santa Killer behind us the series takes a new direction and to me it just doesn't work.The film is set on Christmas but the only way you could tell that is from the few scenes at The main Character Laura's Boyfriends families house. This film strays from the slasher film and ventures into witchcraft when A woman bursts into flames and jumps from a rooftop in the opening scene.
The following day Kim who works at a local newspaper wants to cover the story but is laughed at due to her being the classifieds writer and no one takes her seriously including her boyfriend Hank. So Kim decides to write the story and do all the grunt work herself.She immediately hits the streets asking business owners  in the building the woman jumped from questions concerning the situation and if anyone knew the woman. this leads her to  a bookshop owned by Fima. Fima provides a little advice and offers her a book on witchcraft to go along with the literature on Spontaneous Combustion, At first Kim Hesitates but eventually takes the book and Fima invites Kim to a meeting of her friends before escorting her to the rooftop where it all happened.
While on the roof, Ricky the homeless help from the shop pulls a strange bug like creature from a drain on the roof and shows it to Kim before she leaves.
When Kim returns home things start to get weird as her home becomes infested by Roaches and she sees a giant bug scurrying through the house.Kim goes to the meeting with Fima and is introduced to a group of her friends who give her some wine which starts to make Kim hallucinate and she begins to change. She becomes distant from her Boyfriend and becomes heavily involved with Fima's little group. One night Kim goes to Fima's for some drinks and conversation about the book she was given and she again is given wine which makes her pass out, when she awakes Fima's friends are performing some sort of ritual on her. This leads to Kim throwing up one of the large bugs Ricky found before and when she arrives back home she is like a seductive sex kitten as she aggressively goes after Hank, Then in the midst of a sex scene Ricky just casually walks in on them and starts watching t.v. And guess what is on the tube? Why of course footage from Silent Night deadly night pt.3. Hank see's Ricky and freaks out and a fight starts leading to Hank being killed and Then one of Kim's friends from work arrives and tell Kim to go with Ricky although she resists at first because she begins to feel the group are witches and she wants no part of their cult. Though she does eventually go willingly.

After arriving back at Fimas place more rituals take place and afterwards Kim goes through a metamorphosis of sorts, briefly turning into a insect like creature after she is forced to have sex with Ricky in order to impregnate her for some reason not explained.
Kim finally decides she has had enough when the group tells her she has been initiated now and she must provide a boy to sacrifice in order to complete her transformation to witch hood. The clan tells her to bring Hank's younger brother to be sacrificed and when she denies it and tries to escape , she starts to burst into flames so of course she gives in. Fima also informs Kim that the woman that burned in the beginning was her daughter who could not finish the initiation and Kim is there to replace her. Kim kidnaps the young boy and a sacrifice is to take place on the rooftop , when we get the ever so obvious ending leading to Fima burning and Falling to her death from the same rooftop. Then the credits roll.
So this is where they decided to take the franchise? From A relatively by the numbers Slasher to a by the book standard witchcraft movie....Not sure this is a great direction change. At least when the Halloween Series switched things up with part 3 that film was strange , original and entertaining, this film brings nothing new to the table.I do agree that the Santa killer was not going anywhere since they could not pull a successful one off since the first installment but I just don't see this one as being an improvement.After this installment the series only had one more in it's life span and it is another completely different unrelated story, Hopefully it successfully brings this franchise back from the dead and is at least entertaining, I doubt it though since it was indeed the last of the title.At least this one was decently acted and the cast seemed to take the film serious, Also Clint Howard was pretty good in his role of Ricky the Homeless guy.
Gore:3
Nudity:1
Story:4
Characters:6
Overall: 4 out of 10

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