A stylish looking slasher that is all talk than bite….

You can’t help but admire the ambition of He Never Left. The stylish old style credits along with its grainy imagery and at times the nicely done Halloween homage that trickles through. should warm the heart of any watching slasher fan, the trouble is that its eagerness to offer something different is also its biggest downfall as it fails the crucial ingredient of it actually being scary and in fact a horror film.

A title card at the beginning sort of riffs of a town like Haddonfield, this time Larsen City where its been haunted and stalked by the masked serial killer known as PALE FACE but unlike Michael Myers who returns for his yearly visits, this new killer has vanished without trace with his name now whispered among the townsfolk, still scared that one day the masked fiend will turn up to finish off what he started.

A cold opening kill shows us the ruthlessness of this new bogeyman but instead of the film setting us up on this intriguing premise, oddly the script moves to a motel in which the majority of the film takes place as we follow Gabriel – a rather excellent Colin Cunningham – a desperate criminal on the run and who thanks with the help of his girlfriend Carly (Jessica Staples) as managed to hide out in a hotel room, patiently waiting for a phone call which is his ticket for a ride and freedom.

Holed up, he starts to hear strange mumblings and noises coming from the room next door, is it paranoia or is Pale Face back in town? What do you think? In some ways its hard to dislike this movie as there are some good tension moments all carried through thanks to the performance of Cunningham who offers up a new kind of hero for a slash, a refreshing blast from the typical final girl stereotype, Gabriel is obviously not a very nice guy but is possibly the only guy to help in this situation.

Sadly, the prolonged talkative scenes overcomes any of the positivity as it all becomes a bit of a slog which is a shame. The ominous music along with the Halloween decorations on display gives the film the required haunt it needs, but its all let down by a serious lack of action and kills that will lead many to lose interest long before the climax.

You can’t help but feel that for its grand ambition the commitment to stay with the slow pace is not really duly rewarded. The arrival of Pale Face feels all a bit anticlimactic, the script threatening to offer a grand showdown but instead overplaying its hand, with more dialogue added on to more dialogue. If anything the poster and premises is probably the film’s own worst enemy. Anyone hoping for a new stab at a slasher will be solely disappointed as this is more of a character study than a simple stalk and murder caper.

It may work for some who may marvel at the deep narrative where guilt and redemption serves as a powerful arc, but its own cleverness will be a massive off-putting for those wanting cheap scares and bloodshed and even if the two groups find a level ground, they’ll no doubt all be in agreement that the finale should be more bang than whimper….

2 Hatchets out of 5

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