I had a decent time with The Initiation and it seems to be one of the better early eighties slashers. Daphne Zuniga makes for a likable enough lead, she ain't no Jamie Lee Curtis but shes pretty engaging. Vera Miles and Clu Gallagher add a bit of star power, though neither have particularly big roles. The film is
hampered by its first hour, in which too little happens and the initially intriguing dream based set up soon becomes a predictable and not well written enough. The film chugs along nicely though, pretty well directed with some creepy moments. Once the film finally locks down into slasher shenanigans, the film serves up some great stalking sequences in a good location (mall) and an pleasurably demented final twist. The killings range from ace to amusing to merely OK and a deal more gore would certainly not have gone amiss, especially given the quality of the build ups to the killings. The eerie score helps here. The film has enough blood to satisfy, but it could have gone further. There some fine nudity in here to round out the package, giving the film a great eighties feel. Altogether, if this were slightly gorier and tighter paced it could have been really special. As is, with a good body count, nudity, more fear than usual for the genre and a wacky and great fun finale, this is still happily recommended for slasher fans.
September 8, 2009
