Holiday horror films are and have always been a huge thing with horror films taking advantage of the holiday spirits to make some legendary films. Black Friday however is something often overlooked as a premise for a horror film even though its seemingly perfect for the genre. While this movie doesn’t make the best case for it, it does however show some charm in moments.
Taking place at a toy store overnight on Thanksgiving we follow a room full of workers who seemingly have to fight off their customer base who have turned into a mutation of zombie like creatures. Its a pretty paint by numbers story here with them trying to survive and escape from their creatures who were once their customers. Tied together by an attempt at some humor and feelings in the story helps keep the pace going for this films short run time.
One downfall here is that with the films shorter run time, just under 90 minutes, the movie rushes through a lot of things without getting into detail really. Our characters mostly stay cliched and generic, the story never gets explained really, and events move quickly. With how this film is though a longer run time I feel would make these flaws stick out even more as at times it almost seems that things were pushed in or made longer to get the run time as close to 90 minutes as possible.
Our zombie designs though look somewhat cool at least with the mutated versions bringing back a very 80s horror feel to them. The gore is subpar and lower budget just as the film aims to be. What ultimately kills this though is the climax of the film which just destroys anything the film tried to bring. Be it because of the poor CGI they had to add or it just making a rushed film become even more rushed but it just was an awful way to end the film.
Overall trying to make the characters likable wasn’t enough to make Black Friday more than just a subpar low budget horror film. With a likable cast that is either horrible underused (Michael Jai White) or just paper thin (almost everyone else), Black Friday night be entertaining for one time but just like the day itself you’ll be dreading it if you ever have to deal with it again.
Score :
2 / 5
