The Final

I thought the premise of this movie sounded great, and though a friend of mine said that the movie was not, in fact, great, I decided to give it a chance today.  I'm glad I watched it, but it could have been so much better. The premise is an old one: a bunch of bullies from a local school RSVP to a party thinking they'll booze it up and have a great time, only they wind up drugged, and when they wake up, they find themselves shackled together, facng a group of masked  maniacs who intend to make them suffer for their sins.  It really could have been great, but the movie doesn't even TRY to hide who the killers are, and it gives this long, annoying, overly preachy setup where the killers think they're being sent by God or something dumb like that.  It all could have been cut and the movie would have been better and less stupid.  We get that the killers think they're right, there's no need to rub our faces in the boring series of events that led to this thought process.  Shrouding the identity of the killers in mystery would have made this movie ten times better, and that irks me.  As for the gore, that part is well done, and the acting isn't bad, either, though they could again have cut out all the annoying references to how these killers think they're on a mission from God.  We know that, we heard you the first ten times, can we please move on?  I really wanted to like this movie more than I did, but the pacing was off, the preachiness got annoying, and the lack of mystery or tension spoiled the fun for me.