Saturday the 14th

What happens when you make a horror comedy and include neither? Hokey but never campy, silly but never funny, Saturday The 14th at least has people giving earnest performances. But the material is way too weird (mistaking a dying woman’s scream for an owl, which is a running gag for 5 minutes) or just cheesy. I won’t knock the cheap latex costumes or bad special effects, because this thing is a C-level movie at best, but it never uses it to its advantage. Everything is done in half measures — the monsters are all “hairy with teeth”, the jokes are too infrequent and usually fall flat, the satire is non-existent, and if it’s supposed to scare anyway, I’d like to meet them. It’s just dull. Painfully dull. Scary Movie may be broad and tacky, but it’s got energy and goes for it. This is just a dead fish of a movie. Hooptober 2021 movie #6 of 23.