Slink

Released by: Frolic Pictures
Released on: June 14, 2013.
Director: Jared Masters
Cast: Julia Faye West, Danika Galindo, Art Roberts, Dawna Lee Heising
Year: 2013
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The Movie:

The latest effort from Jared Masters and Frolic Pictures, the same team that brought us 8 Reels Of Sewage, is this lurid little shocker, aptly titled Slink. The film is set in a quaint little town called Wickenhaven where a pretty young woman named Joan (Dawna Lee Heising) runs a company that makes leather handbags. As unlikely as it sounds, this is the small town's core industry, though her husband, Dale (Art Roberts), who runs a rather unusual tanning salon. Joan isn't the most ethical entrepreneur around - she's got some pretty sleazy sales tactics and uses questionable materials in her goods, the most obvious being one she calls 'slink' and which she claims is made of dead animal fetuses.

Entering into the scene are Kayla Nunez (Danika Galindo) and her sister Courtney (Marylyn Brooks) who come to Wickenhaven after the passing of their Uncle Arlo. They arrive expecting to inherit his estate but find the home occupied by a woman claiming to be their Aunt May (Julia Faye West). What Kayla and Courtney don't realize is that Wickenhaven is a hot bed of diabolical activity, not the least of which is rash of disappearances, each of the missing a pretty young woman…

A good bit smarter than your average low budget horror/slasher throwback, Slink is an interesting mix of cold, clinical Cronenberg-esque scenes that depict the systematic slaughter of young women which contrast with brighter, more garish moments that make thinly veiled barbs at American culture's unhealthy obsession with fashion. Masters has, with his past efforts, shown a knack for style and here he's able to match it with an equal amount of substance as well. The typical chinks in the armor of low budget movie making show here as they do in most productions made without sizeable backing, but for the most part, the cast and crew pull this off rather well.

The performances are generally pretty strong - Art Roberts manages to exude some believable perversions with his take on his character while Dawna Lee Heising does him one better but playing the two faced and fairly malicious female antagonist very effectively and creating a character that probably should have been given more screen time. The rest of the cast aren't quite as memorable but do fine in their roles, while some of the grisly set pieces are nasty enough to work but manage to do so without feeling like modern horror nonsense like Saw or Hostel style gore fests. The score borrows a little too heavily from Goblin and maybe a few older John Carpenter movies to be as original as you might want it to be, but if nothing else the music does suit the tone of the movie rather well.

Overall though, Slink is worth a watch. It's well paced, well edited and pretty entertaining. Whatever flaws that do pop up are easy enough to overlook thanks to an interesting premise. It owes a debt to some of the slashers that came before it but carves out enough of its own identity to deliver.