21st Century Cult Classics: Murder Party

Aaaah…Nothing like a little Truth Serum-Truth or Dare to get this Halloween party going…

Hey…Is the Cardboard Knight back there tied to a chair?

Wait a second…What kind of party is this?

Oh…Okay.

 

Cult Classics…

You know I love ’em!

But what exactly makes a cult classic?

Typically it’s a film that speaks to a particular group of people, and becomes popular among that small but fiercely loyal fan base…Although, it may not ever be critically acclaimed…And it may not ever win big at the box office…

 That’s okay, because it has us…The fans…Quoting the films…Wearing the T-Shirts…Spreading the love for a cult classic, like a virus spread by word of mouth.

 

Murder Party (2007) – This is the first film of writer/director Jeremy Saulnier…Those of you who’ve never heard of him, may not have seen his sophomore effort, which was one of the most intense and realistic revenge flicks ever made…Blue Ruin. It was Saulnier’s raw and organic revenge thriller that made me seek out, and eventually find this one…

So, here’s the story…

When we meet Chris, he is on his way home from grabbing a handful of horror videotapes at the local video store…

He stumbles upon an invitation to something called a “Murder Party” that was blowing down his street…

You figure out pretty quick, Chris is just a super-nice, and super-lonely guy…Hell, he’s so nice, that he won’t even kick his cat, Sir Lancelot out of the one and only chair in his apartment so he can watch a movie…And since Sir Lancelot decided to hog the chair, this friendless fellow decides to whip up a costume and a pumpkin bread, and head out to the party he was “invited” to…

After surviving a harrowing commute, fraught with aggressive rappers, and dark, scary streets…

Chris arrives at the party…

He actually graciously thanks the hosts for inviting him, and hands over the homemade pumpkin bread…Chris is the epitome of the perfect guest…

But the hosts…

The hosts are a collection of art-school hipster assholes who have decided to invite a random stranger to their party, for the sole purpose of turning the murder of this stranger into a work of art…

They are the arrogantly pretentious, shamelessly self-promoting, desperately approval-seeking, morally-shallow narcissists, who, for years, have been told they were special by Mummy and Daddy…

And they believed it.

You really couldn’t ask for a better bunch of antagonists…

You’re supposed to eventually hate them…

But, you’re going to completely hate them…

Right the fuck away.

 

Mishaps and mayhem ensue as the party rolls on, and with each twisted twist and each turned-up turn, come more laughs and more kills…

 

Those laughs are genuine, and at times uproarious…

And the kills are bloody, gory, gruesome, and all done without a single pixel of CGI…

Just the way I like ’em.

 

So, before Jeremy Saulnier created Blue Ruin, one of my all-time favorite revenge flicks…

Before he turned Captain Picard into a Neo-Nazi in his upcoming, Green Room…

He created Murder Party…

A 21st Century Cult Classic!