How seriously this horror-comedy should be taken as a commentary on the art world is underlined with the only specific reference I caught to actual cultural practice, a rant that invokes "Jackson Pollock...and that Scorsese movie...with that guy." By which he obviously means Nick Nolte in New York Stories, right? Although by the time the battered geek returns home from the crazy streets of subcultural NYC in the final scene, I thought maybe they meant Griffin Dunne, because there's a lot of After Hours in here. A horror-comedy about murder as performance art, this movie has pacing problems; the slow build becomes a drag, and then suddenly everyone's dead in thirty seconds. Not all of the many clever ideas are well executed, the script's stabs at character development need to be improved or abandoned, and rather than surprising us with alternating funny-scary it sometimes sits too long in the middle. But a bit like Alex Barnett's reverse-Macgyver closet shtick can carry you a long way, and ultimately this is a likable and enjoyable movie whose energy and invention tend to balance out its flaws. I hope this longstanding ensemble, whose first feature this is, keeps learning, improving, and getting along.
Review of Murder Party
