FinalExam

Final Exam (1981)

You know if studying for final exams weren’t already hard enough try doing it with a crazed killer picking off your fellow students. This is what happens in this slasher movie set on a small college campus populated with all the stereotypical characters. You have the jock, the popular guy, the easy girl, the good girl, and of course the nerd. One at a time they are picked off by the killer, whose motivations are never revealed. In the end the lone remaining survivor must do battle with the killer or become another one of his victims. This movie also has the most complicated scheme I’ve ever seen to get a decent grade on a midterm and a “boy who cried wolf” moment that you can see coming a mile away!

Sorry for the rather short and generic plot synopsis, but this is a rather generic movie. But in the case of a slasher film that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Final Exam follows the formula closely and ends up being entertaining, if somewhat unoriginal, movie. One of the big complaints is that after the first couple of kills the movie goes a while before the killer does away with anyone else. The movie uses that time to establish the characters, which makes their eventual demise either much more sad or enjoyable, depending on the character. I didn’t find any of the back-story and character development boring, but I can see how some fans might. The cast is decent, but nothing special. But then all they really have to do is deliver some lines, scream, and die well.

There is one complaint that is legitimate about this movie. Many of the gore hounds were expecting another blood bath with creative and “juicy” kills splattering the red stuff all over the screen. Final Exam is less Friday the 13th and more Halloween with most of the kills happening either off screen or when on screen being very tame. Many fans of the slasher genre seem to think that if you don’t have “Savini” level effects in your movie then it sucks. I can respect that opinion, but I don’t agree with it. For me the movie more than makes up for the lack of latex with the tension and mood that it builds, especially the last 10 or 15 minutes.

This is a strange movie for me to review because I can understand where those who have a problem with the movie are coming from. The lack of gore, the length between kills and all the character development isn’t what many fans expect from the slasher subgenre. But those are the very reasons I like this movie as much as I do, because it is different. So I guess that you have been warned and if you are looking for a body count movie with lots of blood then Final Exam will disappoint you. But I still really like it and recommend it.

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer