Well, my goal of writing only werewolf movie reviews really tanked this month, and with that in mind I decided to throw in the towel and just start reviewing again. I managed to watch a cool slasher film that most people didn’t see for a few years until it was purchased by the people that were producing the Flavor Flav horror anthology television series for BET and thus we get this movie called Dead Tone.
I read some criticisms about how this movie was a rip off of “Scream” but when you get to the meat of the movie you start to realize that this stands all on its own with great prowess. The plot involves a prank call gone awry. A few kids are calling people and making them panic, and if they can reach 75 seconds on the call, they are declared a winner. The opening is very hard to watch, especially since many taboos are broken in the horror genre. Just in the first 15 minutes, you get child killing, a strangling, and a lot of violence that you just don’t get with a lot of other horror films today. Granted, this movie was made in 2005, and then released in 2007, so it’s not like a brand new one, but it definitely earns the R rating with how brutal the opening is.
The movie progresses nicely, setting up the twists that are to come and in predictable fashion the children are college students when we pick up the story. They are headed to a remote house where they can party and once again play the game of prank calls. It’s there that they run into the same villain that terrorized them as children, only this time they are going to get hacked!
The movie turns from dramatic thriller to serious slasher with a faceless villain smarter than the kids he’s chasing. You get all the gore you want here, and if you blink you’ll miss some cool sequences of death. The movie continues like this through the third act, right before it hits the climax in which we see who the villain really is, and a twist that my girlfriend even didn’t see coming!
By the time a rogue detective gets to the crime scene, we already get more twists than a pretzel. That’s terrible, I’m sorry.
Dead Tone is a refreshing slasher movie that had me guessing until the very end. I appreciated that this didn’t take itself too seriously, and delivered a good romp of horror fun. I really enjoyed this one and highly recommend it for those that are looking for a hidden gem amongst the bargain bin movies at your local video store. Do they exist any longer? Man, remember the porn sections that were blocked by red ropes or something like that? Nevermind. Check this movie out and look for a brief cameo in the start by FLAVOR FLAV!
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