The Dutch horror film SLAUGHTER NIGHT, aka SL8N8 (2007) seems at first to be your typical "teens getting stalked and slaughtered" bore, but it turns into one killer spookhouse ride as soon as our stereotypical group of good kids and party animals find themselves trapped in an abandoned mine and terrorized by the vengeful ghost of a maniacal serial killer.
A prologue detailing the gruesome murder spree of one Andries Martiens (Robert Eleveld) centuries ago gets the movie off to a shocking start as he captures several children, then lops off their heads and mounts them on poles (advance warning here to those who find child murders hard to watch).
Killing eight people in this way will allow Martiens to enter Hell and return, for reasons made clear later on. His plan is thwarted as he is captured and put to death.
Switch to present day, as our fun-loving youngsters take a tour of a vast system of mine tunnels that is haunted by Martiens' ghost.
After the elevator goes on the fritz and they're trapped underground, Martiens begins to possess them one by one and resumes his headhunting expedition that was interrupted centuries before.
The result is a series of extremely unnerving stalk-and-kill sequences with some gruesome and very inventive deaths (the shovel beheading is truly memorable).
Victoria Koblenko stars as Kristel, the level-headed girl whose father was recently killed in a (spectacularly staged) car crash and who is now helping them from the other world via a Ouija board.
Kurt Rogiers is also good as her would-be boyfriend Mark, and Linda van der Steen is quite convincing as the spoiled bratty girl, Estrild, who becomes one hot monster later on.
The EXORCIST-style makeup on the possessed characters is chilling and the actors do a great job as either terrified victims or crazed psycho-killers.
The movie looks great and directors Frank van Geloven and Edwin Visser stage everything beautifully. Even the Shaky-Cam is used to good effect most of the time.
SLAUGHTER NIGHT is one of the best movies of its kind that I've seen in a long time, maintaining a high level of fear and suspense with a pace that never lets up.
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