Night of the Reaper - Movie Review

The Movie: Night of the Reaper

The Director: Brandon Christensen

The Cast: Jessica Clement, Ryan Robbins, Summer H. Howell, Matty Finochio, Max Christensen, Ben Cockell, Bryn Samuel, Savannah Miller, Susan Serrao, Huxley Fisher, Isla Spencer, Blair Young, Drake Seipert

The Story: College student Deena visits home and is roped into babysitting. The local sheriff is mailed a piece of evidence and is led on a scavenger hunt to reveal the killer of another babysitter.

The Rating: 6 / 10

The Review:

Over the last few years, the Shudder streaming service has become the go to place for horror movies of all types with a steady stream of original content being released both to the platform and to theaters. The "Shudder Original" tag on any horror movie has also become a hallmark for genre fans to know when a movie is going to be worth checking out and Brandon Christenson's Night of the Reaper fits nicely in that very space.

If you subscribe to Shudder, you are undoubtedly familiar with the nostalgia factor involved in watching just about anything they have to offer whether it's a classic b-movie horror that you may have seen late night on the USA network back in the early days of cable TV or maybe it's a new movie from an up and coming filmmaker who seeks to call back to those same aesthetics that made the horror genre such a special thing in the first place.

I don't know if Christensen intended his movie to find such a comfortable and appropriate home, but it definitely checks all the boxes when it comes to having the same type of throwback horror vibes that you got from late nights popping those scary VHS tapes into your VCR. I hope you know what that is or even what that means. What I mean by this is that the movie is set during the 1980's and the filmmakers have given it the look and feel of a movie that would have been made around that same time.

The story is pretty interesting and has a couple solid plot twists and there's just enough tension and scares to keep you on your toes and all of that at least makes the movie worth checking out. I did feel like the story wasn't bringing anything new to the table so it relied heavily on the retro/nostalgia vibes which is fine, not every movie needs to be a ground breaking and genre bending experience. This it eh type of horror movie that you can just kick back and enjoy.