Stag Night (2008) Review

Stag Night appears to be the product of two stoners, a bag of pot, and a late night viewing of "Wrong Turn". The movie follows a group of friends out on the town for a bachelor party. When one of our main characters attempts to sexually assault a girl they are on the subway with, the chaos causes the group, and two girls to get off of the train, only to have it, of course, leave them behind. Trapped, and looking around, they come across a news paper article about Nixon and Watergate, so it doesn't appear that the exits have been opened to this particular stop in some time. While searching for an exit, they run across a couple of wiley men, slicing a police officer limb from limb. Since they can't walk slowly back into the tunnel without kicking a can to alert the psychopaths, they are now being hunted.

The problem with Stag Night is not that it's a terrible movie, it's just so eerily similar to other films, especially Wrong Turn, that you just can't ignore it. Events unfold in almost verbatim order and fashion. The car accident, is now replaced with a botched train ride, then of course, six stranded people, four of which head off into the unknown to seek help while the remaining two hang back to smoke pot and have sex. Sounding familiar yet?





The acting is fairly decent, all things considering. I've never been a fan of Breckin Meyer. There's just something about him, he reminds me of a garden gnome, so it's hard for me to take him seriously, especially when he's kicking a 6 foot tall troglodyte's ass. For the most part though, him and the rest of the supporting cast play their roles as well as the script would allow. No real complaints.





The Special FX, I'm sure are nice. The blood looked nice, but for the most part the "Bourne" shaky cam effects completely ruins it. It is rare that you actually get to see the carnage on-screen. It's mostly delivered in quick flashes of red blurriness. There is a "head squish" scene in the flick that is almost reminiscent of the one in Intruder(1989). There's plenty of gooey red stuff in the flick, so the violence is present. it's just hard to decipher what exactly is happening.





The antagonists in the film are... Well, they're not scary. It's like they went into the subways of NYC and traded cheeseburgers to homeless people for them to act in the movie. There is no reason why that they seem to have the supernatural strength that they do, nor the martial arts skills of a Shaolin Monk. They're just dirty people with beards and dreadlocks. At least in Wrong Turn, there was years of inbreeding that suggested something about their abilities, and that they were deformed.

"Stag Night" feels pre-processed. It is a movie that you will watch once, then completely forget. I'm not saying to stay away from it, I'm just saying, it's something you've seen before, and seen done better. If you see it for a buck in a redbox, give it a go, it's better than prime time reality television that's for sure. But don't go out of your way to see it, it's not worth the trouble.

5/10