Offerings

Offerings (1989)

This is a fairly late entry into the slasher movie craze of the 1980s. We are introduced to a group of children, one of whom seems to be the oddball of the bunch. After teasing and bullying him the other kids, expect for his one friend Gretchen, convince him to walk on the edge of a well. Things don’t end well (do they ever in these movies?) and he falls in giving himself brain damage. Flash-forward to years later and the boy breaks free of the mental institution to kill off all those that picked on him years earlier. Not only that but he decides to send bits of them (including as pizza toppings!) to his only friend Gretchen.

This has got to be one of the slowest and most boring slasher movies that I’ve ever sat thru. We are treated again and again to long shots of people walking or talking, I’m thinking because the filmmaker didn’t have enough plot to fill the runtime up. If that weren’t bad enough the movie is completely missing the two staples of the genre, boobs and blood. There is no nudity in the movie, which is again a must for a slasher film (unless you are a brilliant filmmaker… so they really needed some skin here). Add to that the fact that the kills are off-screen and incredibly tame (blood being dribbled across the floor). It took me 2 viewings to get all the way thru Offerings without falling asleep, and even then it was painful getting past the last 10 minutes.

The acting starts off terrible with some of the worst child actors that I’ve ever seen on screen. These kids can hardly spit the dialogue out without tripping over their words. When they do it is either in monotone or screaming at each other! Then when the story shifts to 10 years later and we get the grown up versions of the characters they don’t get that much better. The dialogue is delivered in such a way that I was rooting for the killer to hurry up and kill them so the entire painful process to be over. Oh and the actor playing the killer clearly watched Carpenter’s Halloween because he is trying to so badly to emulate the shape. Watch how he moves and then get angry that you are watching this rather than a good movie!

So I’ve ripped on the plot, characters, and performances so lets talk some technical bits. Again I just want to mention that the movie has little to no blood. When they do try and get gory all you see are some rubber props that any Halloween shop sells. Also at points the movie is so dark that you can’t really seen what is going on. Which honestly might not be that bad of a thing. Finally as the final insult it seems that someone decided they could sit in front of a Casio keyboard and make a soundtrack that was”homage” to John Carpenter (again ripping off Halloween!).

You know I don’t care if you are going to copy a successful horror movie, just do it well. When you don’t it only makes me hate your movie more. Stay far away from Offerings. It is a complete waste of time. The only reason that it gets a star from me is because of the human sausage.

1 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer