You Can't Kill Stephen King - Good effort, but could have done better

I appreciate that ‘slasher’ films have become a bit ‘old hat’ these days. Most B-movies in the genre don’t even try to come up with anything more original than some masked loon stalking and murdering a bunch of over-sexed teenagers. However, with ‘You Can’t Kill Stephen King’ at least the makers tried to do something a little different.

For a start, they injected a little humour into the film. If you’re looking for a straight horror, you won’t find it here. It’s definitely black comedy-horror all the way. They also try and play on the obviously clichés and conventions you’d expect to find within this type of film and go some way to turn them on their heads and exploit them.

For all that, the film is actually quite enjoyable, as a group of teens travel off the beaten path in small-town America in an attempt to track down their icon, none other than Stephen King himself. However, as you might expect, they start falling victim to an unseen assailant. And here lies the main problem... you can subvert a few clichés and add a bit of humour, but what you’re left with is a pretty run-of-the-mill slasher film. Although some parts of it are fun, it still doesn’t succeed in being different enough to really raise it above the thousands of similar movies (some of which are played straight, others not).

So, despite all the good intentions, all you have is an average slasher movie. If you’re really desperate to see what is little more than a ‘modern Friday 13th type film’ then give this one a go, or if you’re a die-hard fan of Stephen King you should enjoy all the homages to him. But, ultimately, there’s not enough that’s new here to really recommend this film over the countless others like it.

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back