Romina (2018)

Review

"I need you to tell me if you were a participant, victim or witness of the multiple homicides that took place at Crystal Lake on June 27th, 2016." - Anon

A group of friends head into the backwoods, okay an isolated camping ground, for a couple of days of teenage hijinks, what could go wrong. The usual diverse group dynamics are in play, including two couples, and a lone dude and surprise surprise the dude who lives in the backwoods, uhmm camping grounds. If we had a harbinger of doom, you know Crazy Ralph, I would be saying hey ho lets go. There's some talk about a strange girl at school, which I guess is foreshadowing, as the loner dude discovers a chick camping on her own. Naturally, this being the age of selfish motives, a rape goes down and the weekend suddenly takes a turn into what could definitely go wrong drive.

Naturally no crime goes unpunished in slasher land and people start going missing, the car suddenly won't start, and the camp caretaker cannot make phone calls - a case of cut telephone wires. Kids ask your parents. With night falling the survivors discover some gruesome slasher displays and realise they are in a world of hurt. There's a twist coming at us, which may or may not make sense depending on your point of view, and a whole lot of grisly deaths. Naturally death is going to happen at any place called Crystal Lake; you just don't need hockey masks and machetes. Let's see if the Mexicans can get a slasher right, it's back to the 80s y'all.

Seems every man and his dog is having a go at this one with director Diego Cohen being viewed as public enemy number one, it also seems a lot of people have missed about thirty years of subpar slasher movies. While Romina might not be exactly Halloween it equally isn't the worse knife meets the flesh flick out there. Unfortunately for director Cohen the snow flack brigade have a bandwagon and lemming like are leaping onto it like the sheep there are. While there are major flaws in the movie it also has the odd smell of roses lingering in the air.

Firstly the script is somewhat confused to say the least, Diego Cohen double downing here, with motivation being convoluted. We have a protagonist and certainly a reason to go on the revenge warpath but the twist ending sort of dilutes that reason, as in everything was setup before a scene that is inserted for red herring value. Other than this strange decision in plotting we're talking a slasher flick hence the normal requirements of character development, the hero's progress, et al aren't exactly high on the priority list. Anyone who attacks this movie based on lack of scripting cred is talking through their bums or don't know the first thing about slasher conventions.

For gorehounds there are some solid kills going down, though to be honest the brutal ones are either off screen, or using the Tobe Hooper technique of you think you see more than you do. Some of the aftermath is pretty graphic, dudes be prepared to be shocked - talking the caretaker here, and there's a feeling that at any moment things might head down the gorenography tunnel. So if you like your slashers wet and warm then you are in the right place.

Naturally about every trope of the subgenre is covered including the car that won't start, actually explained in this movie rather than happening because the script requires it to, survivors finding the bodies of their friends in various states of abuse, and the general inability of any of the victims to get out of Dodge or phone a friend. So yeah, pretty much standard slasher fare without the Director feeling the need to add anything extra to the mix. Which might be viewed as a weakness in the movie but then you would need to see that weakness in about every other slasher ever made since the original trilogy that defined the subgenre.

[Editor's Note: Black Christmas (1974), Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980)]

Guess I should mention the major issue I had with Romina was the first stanza of the movie which dragged in glacial slowness that had me checking my email as it unfolded. Basically for half an hour or so we have six friends talking at each other in the normal asinine fashion that script writers believe that teens tend talk to each other in.

Oddly Diego Cohen frames his movie with the aftermath of events at Crystal lake. So we already known who at least one survivor is and we get some happy snaps of the victims in various stages of disorder. I guess this is meant to throw us off the scent of who the killer is, but since we are all alumni of various revenge epics this doesn't work quite like a Giallo in throwing curve balls at us. I had the faint hope we might end up with some police procedure going down, but guess the budget wasn't stretching that far. So no masked killer still in the woods, Diego Cohen clearly didn't expect to have sequels happening, though I guess one character is still in play, no spoilers folks watch the movie to figure out what I am alluding to.

Going to point the finger at the production values here, we're talking low level investment which is pretty much par for the course for slashers. Director Cohen does what he can with what he has at hand but don't expect to be watching Hollywood blockbuster level entertainment. If you enjoy the Friday the 13th style of slasher shenanigans then you should be across Romina in terms of production levels. We at least get some nice scenery to look at, though a few more pan shots and wide angles wouldn't have been kicked out of bed.

In the wash up I was neither here nor there on Romina, basically this is one of those movies that you can watch or not, it's not going to destroy your horror cred either way. The movie is basically a return to 1980s low budget slasher and it's quite happy to be in that space without the overheads of high budgets and high expectations. While the current mood amongst the great unwashed is to attack this movie like rabid dogs in real terms this is one of those movies that is pretty much slasher lunch meat, it isn't going to be the greatest meal you will ever have but it is still going to be nourishing. Do I recommend this movie, sure I'm a fan of trad slasher and this movie certainly fits the bill.