'Nobody Gets Out Alive' DVD Review

A run-of-the-mill, brainless, cliché-ridden slasher.

Recently released from a hospital stay to treat her depression, Jenn decides it's a good idea to accompany her friends on a camping getaway -- never mind that their destination is rumored to be the hunting ground of a deranged man who kill anyone he comes across in retaliation for the hit-and-run death of his daughter more than a decade earlier. Of course, the legend turns out to be real, and the partying kids get picked off one by one blah blah blah.

It's hard to fathom how a movie as mindlessly derivative as Nobody Gets Out Alive gets made in this day and age. There's hardly a scene that isn't riddled with the sort of horror clichés that have been beaten to death (no pun intended) over the past three decades, from partying teens on camping trips to shadowy killers with vendettas to locals who warn of the dangers of venturing into the woods, stumbling victims, nonworking cellphones, scenes of sadistic torture with rusty instruments, etc. ad nauseum.

The characters are wafer-thin and interchangeable; even the heroine is half-baked, her depression never impacting the story. The villain is a hardly intimidating scrawny 50-year-old who looks like Jim Henson and is armed with just an unwieldy sledgehammer, and yet the victims who outnumber him seven to one can't muster even a minimal amount of resistance. The execution is competent, but there's only so much you can do with material this pedestrian.

The DVD

Special features include commentary, a featurette and outtakes.

Movie: D
DVD: C+

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