Review

A group of college kids are headed into the woods for some gold mining, drinking, and no doubt a bit of hiding the sausage. Weirdly veteran stoner and constantly out of it Zack is driving, Kate and her boyfriend Riff are in the back along with good time girl Vicky while the rather spoilt Ashley has taken time out of her Valley Girl mates to sit in shotgun. Strangely we are spared the ethnic characters.

Naturally they end up at an out of the way cemetery where two weird dudes show them Billy the Kids grave, and warn them of local murders and the like. Also making an appearance is some freaky chick on a horse who doesn't look like Mrs Zombie but does point enigmatically into the distance. Not taking any local advice, there's gold in them there hills or at least sex, our group of unique college individuals arrive at the local dilapidated service station where they insult the inbred attendant and his more normal brother. You know the rest, normal is subjective, there's a psycho killer in the woods the cannon fodder is prepared to meet their fates.

Normally I wouldn't have bothered with this movie but it was in the $2 bin down my local Newsagent and the name Crispin Glover featured prominently. With recommendations like these who could go pass the allure of the DVD goodness. I actually wasn't too sure what I was getting into but Crispin didn't let me down, the movie might have been released in 2006 but for all intents and purposes Simon Says is enmeshed in the 1980s slasher cycle. I'm nearly always up for a slasher that doesn't take itself too seriously and I assume this movie was meant to be taken as a light hearted romp into the slasher woods. Okay the flick has some major issues but it was certainly entertaining enough as the body count mounted like the number of empty bottles at the end of a football game.

While our victim list involves the usual stereotypes one would expect from this sub genre I had a feeling that maybe we were a bit light on in number. I needn't have worried though as a team of paint ball players help improve our casualty list, which kind of reminded me of the folk Jason Voorhees had to take care off during Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI. Come to think of it the hitchhiker that gets skewed early in Simon Says is also kind of like the chick that departs this mortal coil in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, taking a banana with her. Besides a few flourishes Simon Says is simply retreading ground previously covered by the 1980s slasher cycle, so if after a return to well trodden grounds circa early 1980s then dial right in.

While saying there's nothing new in the movie there are still a few aspects that could have been awesome if the Producers of Simon Says had of pulled on the hand brake and demand something like craftsmanship. It's like the Magician's Apprentice in the movie, ideas roll off the conveyor belt at increasing speed but no one steps back , pulls up to the curb, and tries to nail what they have going down. The two dudes in the cemetery, are they ghosts? - pop up in the first five minutes of the movie and then never reappear. One assumes they know what's going down out in the woods but for whatever reason they aren't exactly rushing to inform authorities. They should have been tied in more solidly toward the end of the flick. Similarly the chick on the horse, simply wtf, what was she pointing at and why exactly was she included to no good effect? And what was with the psi connection between two characters that is flirted with then given the arse?

Is it just me or did this movie singularly fail to make any sort of sense outside the psycho?

But it's when we hit the woods that the Audience might be forgiven for switching the flick off. While Crispin Glover is having a ball hamming it up as the deranged psychopath Simon/Stanley, there's some real bad CGI going down that at least brought a smile to my face. The woods are simply littered with CGI booby traps that cause various amounts of physical damage to the extras that are there simply to boast the victim count. While I have instant respect for a Psycho with the foresight to plan ahead, there's a faint hint that the traps have been strategically placed to avoid the script ending on the corner of "Nowhere to go City". Let's face facts here there's only so many flying pickaxe swarms that you can watch before noting the poor computer effects that are sort of paying homage to Ed Wood Jnr, trying to find the positive here y'all. But it all pales into insignificance next to the awesome pickaxe gun Stanley has at his disposal, while being one of the more clumsy devices ever to enter a backwoods Psycho's arsenal I was left wondering how you could get your aim on, pickaxes not being the most aerodynamic projectiles in existence. Think that covers the CGI, its terrible and will have you smirking at the audacity of anyone deciding it passed muster.

Making the CGI seem like really awesome is Crispin Glover's character(s) Simon/Stanley. The movie never adequately explains if we're talking a split personality or two actual characters. Because the budget never extends to including Glover playing both characters in the same frame, including a couple of flashback scenes, and the script writer never adequately explains the current situation I was left totally mystified as to what we are meant to interpret here. Of course the question isn't of paramount importance outside of watching the movie, but still it shows how weak the script actually is. Things are not explained, hinted at, or any clue thrown toward the Audience, we're all in the dark here folks and to be honest I didn't really care. Glover chews the scenery like a goat on steroids, I was cackling like your mad great aunt every time the dude opened his mouth.

Guess I should mention the gore is on the high scale during this movie. We're talking legs being chopped off, evisceration, and any amount of trauma to young flesh. In places the gore is actually effective as opposed to other places where it's obviously fake. Likewise T&A is restricted to one quick boob shoot, but worth checking out in a sort of sexist fashion. Call out to the Feminists writing in, we love your dedication to your course but aren't really listening. Rumour has it there's a lesbo scene in the uncut version of the movie, I cannot confirm any rug munching at this time.

I could say a lot more about this movie but am going to stop here to avoid spoiling Simon Says for the one in ten readers who might actually want to catch the movie. About every cliché is covered, the Psycho isn't ever dead - even after taking a cleaver to the head - oops, and we have a final girl. About the only disturbing images are kept till right at the end the movie, but even then not worth wading through to get to them, I would suggest fast forwarding. If you ever wanted to catch Crispin Glover in camo obviously hiding out in a forest then look no further, Simon Says has you covered. Okay this is it, I'm done, Simon says don't give this one a recommendation. Can I get my $2 back?