Starring Lindsey McKeon, Scott Weinger, Brad Hawkins, Holly Towne, and Candace Moon

Directed by Greg Huson

What do you get when you cross a Mountain Dew commercial and a slasher movie and load it up with a cast of good-looking twenty-something's who seem to have escaped from an episode of MTV's Road Rules? That would be the new slasher flick called Shredder. Think Hot Dog: The Movie meets My Bloody Valentine and you get the idea.

Plot wise, there is absolutely nothing new here. It is, as Roger Ebert would call it, a "dead teenager" movie. The dead teenagers in question all just happen to be snowboarders and that's really the film's only hook. Virtually the entire plot seems to have been derived from the Big Book of Slasher Movie Mechanisms™. You got the old dilapidated house/cabin that they stay in. You got the mysterious masked killer stalking them one by one. You have the scene where someone in the group casually recalls the back-story that will come to explain what the killer's motivation derives from. You have the usual red herrings as to the killer's identity. The mysterious masked killer even has that mystical, psychic power that seemingly all movie slashers have that allows them to know exactly the right moment when a potential victim is going to be alone. Name the cliché and you'll find it in Shredder. Originality and innovation are not in abundance here.

Fortunately, Shredder moves along at a breezy pace for the most part and does have a huge idiot streak running through it. For example, the corpse of one victim who is killed by way of being hung from the ski lift by their own scarf goes unnoticed by other characters going about their business on the ski slope. They are completely oblivious to the dead body dangling in mid-air that keeps passing by in the background. It's little things like that which help to make the constant clichés, generic cast of moronic characters, and occasional Scream-style self referential dialogue tolerable some of the time. Let's face it. Mimicking Scream's sense of self-awareness is all played out - time to find a new gimmick.

If you're looking for a horror movie, this isn't it. There isn't a single scare to be found. Shredder tries to be scary every now and then, especially during the film's abysmal third act that for the most part takes itself way too seriously considering the amount of silliness that has preceded it. Act one teeters between being terrible, clichéd, and terribly clichéd, act two starts out as more of the same but suddenly turns dopey, and the third act tries and fails to be suspenseful until the movie's final moments when it becomes downright retarded.

I think I knew I was going to be in for something either really lame or really cheesy right off the bat when I saw the film's opening kill. A masked skier who looks like Snake Eyes from G.I. Joe (this being the killer's particular brand of slasher-wear) chases another skier down a hill causing him to ski right into the killer's razor-wire trap. Said skier gets decapitated, or should I say a mannequin dressed like the skier gets decapitated causing strawberry jam to ooze out onto the snow. When the first kill in a slasher movie is this ridiculous looking, you know the movie is going to be either really lame or really cheesy and Shredder falls somewhere in the middle.

It also doesn't help that there probably isn't a single character you're going to like. It's a good thing this is a slasher movie because they are all too stupid to live. Leading the group of pretty idiots is the prettiest idiot of all, a vacuous, bitchy Hilton Sister-in-training played by Lindsey McKeon of "Saved By The Bell: The New Class" fame. Come to think of it, using "Saved By The Bell: The New Class" and the word "fame" in the same sentence might be an oxymoron. To be fair, she does a really good job playing an unlikable, selfish, vain, obnoxious bitch; so much so that you're waiting for her to get what's coming to her. But when the killer does turn his attention to her the movie suddenly wants you to emphasize with her in a damsel in distress manner and hope she escapes with her life. It's a major tactical error on the part of the filmmakers and the movie suffers because of it since that part takes up a considerable amount of time.

One odd thing I noticed during the closing credits. Miss McKeon is listed as having a body double even though the movie's only female nudity is provided by another character. I don't know why I'm mentioning this. I just thought it was odd.

Anyway, her uber-rich daddy has just bought this ski resort that was closed down a few years earlier after some drunken snowboarders caused the death of a little girl. The rest of the pretty idiots include the rich bitch's slutty friend, her cousin who isn't as pretty or slutty as the other two so everyone assumes she's a lesbian, the brain-fried stoner, the obligatory pop culture-referencing guy with the video camera recording everything, and the rich bitch's sort of boyfriend who is a decent guy but still about as sharp as a bag of wet mice.

They will also pick up another character on the way to the resort, a hunky Eurotrash skier harboring a dark secret that constantly eats away at his conscience but not enough to prevent him from getting it on with the slutty girls. He also sparks the dialogue exchange that pretty much sums up the movie's mentality.

"In my country, men and women share the bed."

"What country are you from?"

"I am from Europe."

Ah yes, the great nation of Europe. He deadpans that line and the others don't even blink when he says it. Like a lot of the dopiness in Shredder, you're not always 100% sure if the stupidity that just occurred was intentional or unintentional, so I'm not entirely sure whether the filmmakers should be given credit for it.

The local townspeople hate skiers and snowboarders because of that child's death and like to give them dirty looks and drive cars with "Death To Snowboarders" bumper stickers. Plus, the town sheriff seems to be a creep with a thing for pretty young girls and the idiot with the video camera hooks up with a local pretty, young blonde whose borderline psychotic dad is head of the town's anti-snowboarding brigade. There's even talk of the ski resort being haunted by evil spirits. Thus there's no shortage of potential killers but I assure you when the killer or killers', there's a red herring that is played out in such a confusing manner that I wasn't sure if it meant there were actually two killers working together or not, identity is revealed you're probably just going to roll your eyes.

But at least you'll be laughing your ass off seconds later when you see what may very well be the worst CGI death scene ever put to film. How fitting that the movie opened with a totally unconvincing death scene involving a mannequin and ended with a totally unconvincing death scene involving a one-dimensional computer effect.

Still, it's hard to completely hate a movie where the killer has such a hatred for snowboarders that he'll kill one and the completely spaz out hacking up their snowboard with an ax. And remember how Jason used to keep his mom's severed head in his lair? Well, wait until you see what's serving as a monument in this killer's dwelling.

If you're desperate for a slasher movie that you can laugh at and occasionally laugh with, Shredder will probably be a good time waster for you. As far as direct-to-video slasher movies go, Shredder is so lightweight that it's easily more entertaining than most of the others cluttering your local video stores' shelves. Then again, most direct-to-video slasher movies are so far beyond awful that calling Shredder more entertaining than them is hardly a ringing endorsement.

2 STARS