To celebrate her 18th birthday, pretty gay schoolgirl Sophie (Lyndsey Craine) throws a house party, where she hopes to get closer to classmate Jess (Rose Muirhead). Her plans for romance are ruined, however, when the party is crashed by monsters who need her blood to complete a ritual that will give life to all the malevolent creatures depicted in an ancient book.
As a Brit horror fan, I'm a keen supporter of independent UK scary movies, but it's tough going at times: the gems are often few and far between, resulting in a lot of disappointment. Book of Monsters, for example, boasts a fun concept with plenty of promise, but it is seriously hampered by weak acting (Nicholas Vince puts in a particularly bad performance, showing why he's best remembered for simply chattering: his delivery of his dialogue is awkward and unconvincing), plot progression that is achieved by the way of too much clumsy exposition, and comedy that frequently falls flat. I wanted to like it, but I didn't.
The party massacre is a lot of fun, full of excessive cheesy splatter, with bodies torn apart and liberal spraying of blood, and if the film had continued in this OTT vein, it might have been a mindlessly enjoyable way to pass the time; unfortunately, the splatter soon dries up, leaving us with the bad acting and the clunky script, made worse by Stewart Sparke's tongue-in-cheek approach that rarely hits the mark (the gags involving the male stripper are especially cringeworthy, and an attack by evil gnomes is hampered by crap effects).
On a slightly more positive note, the main monsters are admirably unconventional in design, although the lack of a decent budget means that they're not very animated and consequently less frightening than they otherwise might have been.
A post credits scene sets up things for a sequel, Sophie and her surviving pals dedicating their lives to hunting and killing monsters. Let's hope they get a stronger script, a bigger budget and a few acting lessons in the interim.
