A group of teenage friends go to an elaborate walk-through haunted house theme park called “Hell Fest” just before Halloween. While making their way through the various themed portions of the park, they are stalked by a killer in a scary mask (it looks like the Aztec Mummy). Naturally, they assume he’s one of the “scare actors” whose job it is to scare the paying guests. The friends soon get more than they bargained for when he really starts picking them off one by one.
Hell Fest is significantly better than the similarly themed Haunt (which came out the year before) as both movies feature near-identical premises. The difference is that here, it’s a killer quietly making his way around a theme park to stalk his victims instead of inside a self-contained haunted house that is ran by psychos. Another difference is that the heroine in this one only goes to the haunted house to meet a boy whereas in Haunt, she was going to the haunted house to forget her stalker ex.
Both films feature a scene where the heroine watches as the killer murders a random person in front of her, but she shrugs it off, thinking it was all part of the act. (The scene in this one is less showy, but more effective.) They also owe a small debt to Tobe Hooper’s The Funhouse, in which teens stayed after hours in an amusement park and were slayed by a deformed killer. Neither movie is able to attain the fever pitch that Hooper brought to the material. However, Hell Fest has a lot more fun with the premise than Haunt did, and even contains flashes of that old school ‘80s slasher movie magic.
The body count is small, but the deaths are memorable. The scene where the killer uses a strongman’s hammer to smash a dude’s head in and still manages to ring the bell is pretty funny. (He should’ve at least won a kewpie doll for that.) There’s also a pretty gnarly hypodermic needle kill that will make people who are sensitive to eye trauma squirm in their seat.
So, if you’re trying to decide between Hell Fest and Haunt, there is no comparison. Hell Fest is the clear winner. It moves at a steady clip, has a couple of effective sequences, and features a cast of (mostly) likeable characters. Haunt, on the other hand, isn’t even worth the price of admission.
AKA: Horror Park.
I was kinda eh on Funhouse honestly, it had serious pacing issues as it took way too long to get going and the heroines kid brother was annoying as hell and contributed nothing worthwhile to the story. I liked both this film and Haunt better then that one honestly.
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