Opening with a Halloween celebration at the Drive-in - how cool is that?! - as friends gather and our lead characters - Addison (Danny Schluck, Street to Table) and Hayes (Brandon DeLany, AIR: The Musical) are introduced, The Day After Halloween warms us up to its rather brash humor as attitudes are assembled, the beer flows freely, movies are alluded to, and pumpkins with swastikas are pondered. All of this with a raunchy swagger in its get-up as costumes are revealed - a fat John McClain, etc - and jokes are filled in for us . . .
. . . “Let’s try and not kill each other tonight.” Uh-oh. Because almost 10 hours later, the party ends with a corpse in their bathtub. It’s The Hangover meets Horror when Gravitas Ventures and Kamikaze Dogfight invite you to witness The Day after Halloween.
Directed by Chad Ostrom, and written by Danny Schluck, this frighteningly fun genre treat sees two lifelong buddies forced to unravel the circumstances that led to a corpse in their bathtub in the wake of a Halloween party! The premise sounds like there’s a good movie kicking around in here, but the main characters are too similar in tone and in humor to be anything but annoying as they deflect the set-up with put-downs and pointless banter.
These two slackers are completely unlikable and, as the film skips around in their history together, it becomes a bit of a chore to hang out with them because their rough edges are pretty garrulous and abrasive. The humor is soaked in film references which is good, but there’s just little to laugh at as the situation involving the dead girl in their tub goes from bad to worse.
Because cutting her up and spreading her parts around different locations in Philadelphia is what they come up with as a viable means to escape suspicions by the local police department. And, when put into action, all Hell follows their not-so-cunning plan thanks to a mysterious costumed woman (Victoria Meade, Construction, Misty Button) who might have been a real vampire.
Are you laughing yet? I feel like there’s a decent idea at work behind the scenes here. I also don’t find much of what made it on the screen all that funny, which suggests to me that this film needed one more pass in the editing room before seeing the light of day. You might chuckle a couple of times, but this one’s a bit of a disappointment when it comes right down to it.
Danny Schluck, Brandon DeLany, Aimee Fogelman, and Victoria Meade star in The Day After Halloween, which lands on digital platforms August 23.
MPAA Rating: Unrated.
Runtime: 82 mins
Director: Chad Ostrum
Writer: Danny Schluck
Cast: Danny Schluck; Brandon DeLany; Aimee Fogelman
Genre: Horror
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Distributor: Gravitas Ventures
Official Site:
Release Date: Digital platforms August 23
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
Synopsis: This frighteningly fun genre treat sees two lifelong buddies forced to unravel the circumstances that led to a corpse in their bathtub in the wake of a Halloween party!
