The question has been asked repeatedly since the video nasty scare of the 1980s (and most likely even well before that), and nobody (especially the filmmakers involved) has felt compelled to answer it: who exactly are slasher movies for? Like any subgenre, they have a base that doesn’t usually stray too far from an easy sociocultural test-market-ready categorization, but frequently mix in elements that suggest that more people watch these movies than would ever freely admit to doing so. Further confusing the issue is Stag Night, a very minor entry in the horror canon that nonetheless inspires you to ask troubling questions about the necessity of the genre itself and its place in the cultural landscape. Basically, you can’t help but wonder whether or not you’re supposed to like the people that are being killed, or whether you’re supposed to be cheering for the largely mute automatons that seem to take little pleasure in gutting them.
Mike (Kip Pardue) is about to get married, and that can only mean one thing: bachelor party, or a so-called stag night, the name of which we are later told originates from a tribal practice where a young man will go out into the forest to kill a stag and thus prove his manhood. Along for the ride through the strip clubs are the generally attribute-less Carl (Scott Adkins) and Joe (Karl Geary) and the reprobate live wire Tony (Breckin Meyer). After Tony’s aggressive come ons to Brita (Vinessa Shaw) and Michele (Sarah Barrand) turn into an altercation, the six of them step out onto an abandoned subway platform. At first, they think that all they have to do is find their way to the next subway platform, but it soon becomes clear that they have an even larger problem to contend with: subway dwelling cannibals who exist in a prehistoric tribal state and feed upon any intruder whom they so please.
The set-up is ridiculous, of course, and unworthy of real examination (no real motivation is given for them leaving the subway in the first place, let alone all of them doing it together at the same time). Additionally, the film’s sense of the New York subway system will have locals pulling their hair out (they get on an L, but apparently land at this mysterious station stop just past Hunter's Point on the 7). But in its combination of both environment and protagonists, Stag Night does bring horror into a place that it doesn’t usually go. Far away from the sleepy suburbs or secluded cabins where most killers seem to dwell, Night is primarily confined to the arteries of an urban megalopolis, taking its violence to an affluent group of white professionals well out of the age range of those typically vivisected while still living. In appearance, behavior, and general demeanor, these people reflect everything that film has taught us to hate; in nearly every horror film with a teenage cast, there’s some rich kid that’s offed with much gore and little fanfare, and though half the fun of American Psycho was laughter at Bateman’s quaint, obsessive tendencies, the other half was seeing him off shallow yuppies like himself. Considering just how little characterization went into Mike and his companions, it’s unlikely that the filmmakers were looking to reverse this trend.
The other clear influence is The Hills Have Eyes, whose class of underdwellers served basically the same function as the ones here, which means that they survive living off the garbage thrown away by people like the ones that they are now hunting to eat. But neither are these people personified beyond the way you would expect wild dogs to be, so it’s hard to be too menaced by them either. When the bodies inevitably start hitting the floor, and people that you don’t know start killing people you don’t like, and you're not sure whether you’re supposed to be scared or cheering the demise of vaporous ax-fodder, it can’t help but strike you that you’re not doing either, which underlines the problem of most of these films. If the kills aren’t that elaborate, and the victims don’t really have a good reason to be alive, it turns violence into something that it never should be: weightless.
Bonus Features
The Blu-ray also contains The Making of Stag Night and a trailer gallery.
"Stag Night" is on sale November 30, -0001 and is rated .
