Aquaslash (Movie Review)

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

PLOT: A slide competition at the Wet Valley Water Park turns into a bloodbath when someone inserts blades into one of the slides.

REVIEW: Writer/director Renaud Gauthier's AQUASLASH (WATCH IT HERE)  starts off like a classic slasher. A couple young people who work at the Wet Valley Water Park decide to stick around after hours and have sex in the park, but their rendezvous gets disrupted – and then they get dismembered – when someone shows up with a machete. At this point, most viewers will be sitting back and expecting to see this machete-wielding madman do a lot more stalking and slashing over the course of the film… But that's not what Gauthier delivers. Viewers will have to wait 50 minutes before the film offers any more of the sort of bloodshed slasher fans will be expecting. That's not to say no one dies in those 50 minutes, but that the movie doesn't meet slasher standards during that time.

While we wait for more slashing, we find out that AQUASLASH is already slightly dated, because most of the characters are members of Valley Hills High's 2018 graduating class, and they are celebrating their graduation with a weekend-long party at the water park. Following this bunch without having to stop for a series of murder scenes allows Gauthier to make most of the movie more reminiscent of an '80s sex comedy than an '80s slasher. Young women play out their scenes in bikinis, there's a bikini car wash, breasts are bared and coated with fluorescent paint at a rave party, characters are on quests to hook up (with one of them seeking to lose his virginity).

There's a lot of character drama going on in the midst of these shenanigans. The lead character is Josh (Nicolas Fontaine), who is in a band that has been booked to perform an '80s rock set at the park (and they do perform a cover of Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night" at one point), and he has his mind set on getting back together with his ex Kimberley (Lanisa Dawn), who works at the park and is dating fellow employee Tommy (Paul Zinno). We also spend a lot of time on the complicated relationships that exist between park owner Paul (Nick Walker); his wife Priscilla (Brittany Drisdelle), who is something of a legend at Valley Hills High; Paul's wild child teenage girlfriend Alice (Madelline Harvey); and men Priscilla gets involved with, like Josh's wealthy father Michael (Howard Rosenstein).

While a focus on character is usually something to be commended, the downside of AQUASLASH spending so much time on these people's personal lives is that I did not find any of them to be particularly likeable. I didn't care about their love lives, and there are so many characters running around that I occasionally felt like I was losing track of who was who. There is some important information to pick up on during all of this, but I would be surprised if any viewers will really care whether or not Josh and Kimberley are going to live happily ever after.

Something that stood out as odd to me are moments when the movie trips over its own timeline. It's set in 2018, and a park employee mentions that the park opened in the summer of 1984, which proved to be a troubled time because either multiple people were killed at the park back then or one person just happened to die there (it depends on who you ask). And yet it's also said that this is the 35th anniversary of that death / those deaths, which wouldn't happen until 2019. 

For most of its running time, it would be easy to just write AQUASLASH off. That 50 minute stretch has some entertainment value, sure, but there's not much in there to make the movie worth recommending. But then we reach the moment slasher fans are waiting for, and Gauthier does something more interesting and unique than just having someone run around the park with a machete. The killer in this film decides to insert criss-crossed blades into one of the water slides right before the park is going to be holding a competition that will require contestants to ride down the slides in teams. Once people start going down the slide those blades are in, AQUASLASH delivers a sequence of bloodshed and insanity that lasts for several minutes, and that sequence earns the movie a recommendation. When people slam into those blades, the gore effects on display are very impressive, and the deaths in this sequence are worth the wait.

It's not often that I would recommend a movie based on one sequence, but it helps that this one is very short. It's only 71 minutes, and the end credits start rolling around the 67 minute mark. You don't have to invest much time to be rewarded with those slide kills.

AQUASLASH is getting a VOD and drive-in release on June 23rd.