Murder Party (2007)
I'll admit that I'm charmed by low-budget movies. I like to see the compromises that need to be made to make, say, a time travel story for the cost of car repairs. Or the kinds of monster effects concocted by a group of friends who are getting paid in pizza and beer. But even the best indie efforts often require the viewer to pretend not to notice the bad acting, the wooden script, the clumsy editing (I'm looking in your direction Kevin Smith). But somehow the makers of Murder Party manage to pull off a hilarious comedy and effectively scary thriller, cast entirely with people who hung out together in high school, without drawing attention to the amateur status of those involved.
"But the package said that the mask was flame-retardant!"
The story is not unlike Scorcese's hilarious 1985 dark comedy After Hours: a kind of square everyman gets himself in trouble in the artsy parts of New York. But instead of Griffin Dunne jumping from taxicab to punk club to suicidal date, we have straight man Chris Sharp tied to a chair and harangued by a room full of talentless and murderous artists in Brooklyn. He's a lonely civil servant taking a chance on a invitation to a Halloween party he finds in the street. The hosts' psycho killer impulses emanate directly from their pretension and desperate need to appear edgy and important. Their lack of artistic talent is matched by their bungling when it comes to offing their helpless victim. Distracted by their own egos, by drugs, and by jealousy, what should be an simple killing turns into a bloody slapstick chase.
The jokes are well-timed, the characters are believable (if absurd) and convincing performances are coaxed out of the cast of unknowns. Sharp is particularly impressive given the limitation his director puts on him: he spends almost the entire movie gagged, or with his cardboard mask over his mouth. (In the DVD extras the director ribs that he did it intentionally, because he didn't trust his friend's acting ability.) The fact that almost all of the characters have the same names as the actors who play them hints that there was less than full confidence that the gang would pull it off. Their stated objective was to go ahead and make a feature film without the money and connections that normally precede such a project. I'd say they succeeded.