BLOODY HOMECOMING (2012)

Studio:       Image Entertainment
Director:    Brian C. Weed
Writer:       Jake Helgren
Producer:  Elizabeth Snoderly
Stars:     Lexi Giovagnoli, Alex Dobrenko, Randi Lamey, Branden Lee Roth, Taryn Cervarich, Elizabeth Bigger, Shaleen Cholera, Jesse Ferraro, Steve Earnest, Rae Latt, Grainne McDermott, Jim Tavare

Review Score: 

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Summary:

Three years after a student dies in a fire at the Homecoming dance, a masked killer stalks the teenagers responsible.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Football team quarterback Billy Corbin and Annie Morgan, Annie’s best friend Loren Gregory and her boyfriend Steve Stein, class president Wade Scott and cheerleader Cassie Herron, goth girl Nora Stanley and her beau Robby, and Jaclyn Baker and her date Karl Clements are the five couples attending Winston High School’s Homecoming dance together. Football player Allen Mathis is also with them. Their group of underclassmen is denied entrance to the school by a trio of senior linemen from the football team. It turns out that Billy paid his teammates for the ruse so that he and his friends could get their girls alone elsewhere.

Billy uses his school keys to move their private party into the Theater department’s auditorium. Billy takes Annie into the costume storage closet and becomes aggressive when she resists his advances. Loren enters and hits Billy over the head with the school spirit baton to save her friend from being raped. Loren locks Billy in the closet and everyone runs outside. A knocked over candle starts a fire in the closet. Principal Dan Patterson, his wife Mrs. Patterson, and teacher Miss Russell join the teens in attempting to rescue Billy once they see the smoke, but it is too late.

3 Years Later – Winston High School prepares for its first Homecoming dance since Billy was killed in the fire. Annie has been taking antidepressants and avoiding her friends since the incident. Fred the janitor catches Robby and Nora having sex in the custodial closet where the couple also discovers a fireman’s uniform. Loren and Steve attempt to visit Annie, but she refuses to answer the door. A killer dressed in the fireman’s mask and jacket then kills Annie in her garage by stabbing her through the mouth with the school spirit baton.

Cheerleader Cheryl and her friend Darcy insult Nora in the girl’s locker room. Loren and the others discover messages in their lockers with the words “Happy Homecoming” written in blood. Principal Patterson opens Annie’s locker, but does not find a message. In Mrs. Patterson’s English class, Jaclyn tells Loren and Steve that she suspects Allen put the messages in their lockers because he is still upset about Billy’s death. Principal Patterson tries to get Cassie alone in his office, but she avoids his advances. Sheriff Corbin, who was Billy’s father, visits the principal to see the mysterious letters. The sheriff blames the kids for his wife Vivian having spent the last three years in a mental hospital.

Wade, Cassie, Loren, Steve, Nora, Robby, and Jaclyn go to Annie’s house, but they do not find her. Mrs. Patterson almost catches her husband looking at pictures of Cassie on his computer. The two of them discuss the Billy Corbin tragedy. Jaclyn calls her boyfriend Karl, now a deputy, and asks him to meet her. He claims that he is unable to, but that he will come find her at the dance when he finishes his patrol. Jaclyn is later upset when he does not show up because she needs to tell him that she is pregnant.

The killer murders Robby and Nora after they have sex in a pickup truck outside the football game. Loren, Steve, Jaclyn, and Cassie meet Wade for a pre-party with Wade’s stolen bottle of alcohol.

At the dance, Miss Russell insults Coach Larry Connally after he makes a pass at her. Steve spikes the punchbowl using Wade’s booze. Cassie is crowned as the Homecoming queen. Wade is murdered when he goes back to look for his bottle. Cassie sees the killer and runs through the hallway. Janitor Fred briefly grabs her, but the killer then stabs him in the neck. Cassie is chased back to the dance floor where she dies just before making it to her friends.

Karl is killed while patrolling outside the dance. A dancer falls in the pool of Cassie’s blood just as Jaclyn discovers Cassie’s severed head in a toilet. The killer grabs Jaclyn, but Steve rescues her. Jaclyn collapses while Steve and Loren flee. Steve and Loren separate. Steve is crushed by the retracting bleachers in the gymnasium. The killer captures Loren as she hides in the locker room. Jaclyn recovers and finds Karl’s dead body in a supply closet.

Loren comes to and finds herself bound to a chair surrounded by her dead friends and a captive Principal Patterson. The killer reveals herself to be Mrs. Patterson. She had a relationship with Billy and has been taking revenge for his death. Mrs. Patterson covers the circle of live and dead bodies with gasoline. As she lights a match, Jaclyn arrives and begins a struggle with her. When Jaclyn is knocked aside, Mrs. Patterson stabs her husband through the heart with the spirit baton. Jaclyn recovers, frees Loren, and kicks Mrs. Patterson onto the spirit stick, which impales her through the chest. Loren and Jaclyn find Janitor Fred wounded as they escape.

Loren and Jaclyn attend their graduation ceremony. Meanwhile, someone dressed in a cap and gown stalks the girls while clutching the spirit baton.

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Review:

The melting pot of teens and teachers at Winston High School covers all the requisite bases.  The group of friends at the center of “Bloody Homecoming” consists of the class president, a cheerleader, the star quarterback, a chubby goth, and other clashing stereotypes that make their convenient union more than a little suspect.  If the multi-racial ethnicities are not enough to tell everyone apart, each person also has a unique hair color and style to keep the players distinguishable whenever characterizations fail to do the trick.  That diversity becomes a problem when “Bloody Homecoming” overstuffs its roster with too many characters to keep the straightforward story light and simple.

Billy Corbin finds himself locked in the Theater department’s costume closet after his grabby paws become too aggressive for his Homecoming date Annie Morgan, and her best friend Loren comes to Annie’s rescue.  Once he knocks over a candle, a fire rages out of control, and Billy’s friends are too late to save him from the blaze.  Three years later, Winston High has healed enough from the tragedy to finally host another Homecoming dance for the students.  Except that an uninvited guest wearing a fireman’s mask and jacket is taking the opportunity to stab the teens responsible for Billy’s death with the school spirit baton.

Has Billy returned from his grave to exact revenge?  Or is the killer really Annie, who has spiraled into a life of isolation and antidepressants since an attempted rape and the gruesome death of her boyfriend?  Maybe Principal Patterson is under the mask, since he has a lecherous crush on Homecoming queen Cassie and wants her all to himself.  Although wandering eyed Coach Connally is just as inappropriate towards the girls, and Miss Russell’s recent spurning of his unwanted advances may have been his boiling point.  Then again, there is also Fred the creepy janitor, Billy’s distraught father the sheriff, the principal’s suspicious wife, the jealous cheerleader, and enough additional red herrings to stock St. Mary’s Friday night fish fry.

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           Coincidence or intentional that the art was changed to resemble "The Loved Ones?" 

So much effort is put into distracting viewers from guessing the killer’s identity that “Bloody Homecoming” ends up with a lot of time spent on pointless characters and dead end subplots.  Yet even those unable to correctly guess who the culprit is will still be able to easily tell who it is not.  Despite a double-digit number of suspects to choose from, there is a choppy structure to the scenes that eliminates just about every teen from the running almost immediately.

That erratic format further extends to tempo issues when it comes to creating suspense.  Scenes of the killer in hot pursuit of the next victim are listless.  Nearly every death is preceded by a lackluster chase sequence featuring one student cowering in a hiding spot while the slasher searches in vain for a shred of tension.  There are too many of these moments that go on for too long, and they all end in an awkwardly acted struggle that makes the scripted action in professional wrestling seem more realistic by comparison.

It would be easier to forgive the shortcomings if “Bloody Homecoming” made up for it in another department.  Sadly, it does not.  The performance needle spikes on both sides of the range.  Some of the actors pull off their parts while others are so green that they could camouflage Kermit the Frog.  The images are often washed in a milky grey or overblown white that gives the picture a flat presentation.  And several effects are so low rent that seeing the film for anything other than a low budget misfire is next to impossible.  At least the filmmakers had the good sense to show a terribly superimposed head in a toilet so briefly that there is a moment to question if the shot was actually as bad as the brain first thought.

“Bloody Homecoming” gives the familiar teenage slasher formula the old college try, but it is ultimately felled by an arrow of inexperience on both sides of the camera.  Director Brian C. Weed and screenwriter Jake Helgren have done their homework and appear well aware of the ingredients necessary to concoct a typical revenge thriller set at a high school dance.  It is just that the execution takes the train off the tracks with a production that will never have a reason to be remembered or revisited once it drops out of the “New Release” listings.

Review Score:  45

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