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The Dinner Party         review by Bobby Blakey

The-Dinner-Party-Poster.jpe

There are so many horror films that feature or begin with a dinner party of some sort as the catalyst including Texas Chainsaw Massacre, You’re Next and most recently Ready Or Not. For whatever reason this seems to offer up some great moments leading into crazed killing and insanity. The latest The Dinner Party is looking to bring its own chaos to the party, but does it offer up anything that helps it stand out or will it fail to make it to the final course?

The Dinner Party follows renowned surgeon and culinary enthusiast, Carmine Braun, who invites playwright, Jeffrey Duncan, and his wife to join his eccentric friends at their semi-annual dinner party, having promised to fund Duncan’s new play to Broadway. As the evening descends into madness, the group’s true intentions are revealed, along with an ancient secret that will change the Duncans’ lives and fortunes forever.

Going in I knew nothing about the film other than the title and poster, so was looking forward to some fun insanity. While there is some plenty of craziness to be had there are some bumps as well. The set-up is fine and purposely makes it vague and often times bizarre to make sure you already know things are not going to be ok when this is all over. This set up is where things struggle for me. It’s that its unnecessary, but there are so many moments that seem to initially drag and needed to be trimmed up a bit.

Some of the characters are way over the top and it took me out of the film at times where I think had they played it up more subtle crazy it would have worked better. This is just my opinion and not to say that what they did doesn’t work, because it does. As the story unfolds it gets stranger and more violent making it a lot of fun to watch. They pull no punches in some moments and it works great. It is a lower budget film, but they’ve done a good job at making look bigger.  

In the end this film isn’t bringing much new to the genre, but it works. It takes a bit to get to the meat of it all but once it does it is all in for some bloody fun. It offers up a fun twist that isn’t overly original, but one that makes for an open end direction to either return to this insanity or cap as is for the perfect ending. Decide for yourself and check out The Dinner Party available now on DVD and Digital from Uncork’d Entertainment.

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