Review of The Girl in the Photographs (2015) by Brett H — 15 Aug 2016

The Girl in the Photographs is a piss-poor slasher film that tries to emulate better movies such as the Scream series (even slightly emulating the opening scene of Scream, only with a C-list actress), and it just so happens to be the last film that Wes Craven produced before his death; terrible film to end your career on.

It's your typical psycho-killer BS; this time they like to take multiple photos of their victims in their last moments before death and then post them in public places because.....reasons. And thus they begin targeting a group of teens/photographers who are trying to capitalize on the "dead model" photography trend they think is taking off.

The cast is mostly nobodies, the exceptions being Kenny Wormald (a popular dancer) and friggin Kumar himself, Kal Penn, playing the sleazy photographer who is a complete dick/perve throughout. The problem this movie has is the lack of motivation from the killers and while one looks relatively normal, the other looks like you threw a single layer of skin over Skeletor and put him in high school: he looks too creepy not to wind up a killer.

The other issue is the notion of photographing the victims, which plays as a bit of a fetish, until the final scene where it appears these guys kill everyone just to take a photo of the final girl with all of the bodies around her and it leaves you asking, "WHAT!? That was their goal?".

The film has a decent body-count, but it's impossible to care about any of these characters and thus you're just waiting for them to die grizzly deaths. The whole premise of this film, title included, doesn't work, it's not scary or rewarding in the slightest, and it's a real shame that the "master of horror's" name has to be attached to this dreck and have it included in his legacy.