Summary
Five nubile coeds, Naomi, Katherine, Marlena, Anna, and some red-head whose name I never caught, decide to have a slumber party in an old, ramshackle mansion on the edge of town. There's no furniture in the house and they don't bring nearly enough bedding to pass the night in anything resembling comfort, but, since they never actually get to sleep, it doesn't really matter.
Dave and Simon, the two official campus nerds, have set up cameras all over the house in the hopes of watching the girls romp around in their underwear. Through some mystical interaction of screenwriting and acting, this manages to make Dave and Simon seem innocent and endearingly desperate instead of perverted and grotesquely rude. I'm still not quite sure how they pulled that off, but I'm really impressed.
Unfortunately for Dave and Simon, it turns out to be the most modest slumber party in cinematic history, with all the girls opting to wear full pajama suits. Probably it's for the best - Dave and Simon not doubt would have had a heart attack (just one between the two of them, though - they even eat dinner out of the same bowl) if they had seen these girls wear and do any of the things that girls in slumber party movies usually wear and do.
When the girls read from a mysterious book and inadvertently awaken the dead (with the usual extreme ease with which the dead are always inadvertently awakened in movies [and, for all I know, in real life]) it's up to Dave and Simon to rescue them from the ensuing flock (I'm sorry, I know "flock" doesn't sound all that menacing, but there simply aren't enough of them to make up a horde.) of moaning zombies in green face paint.
For anyone who can't spare the forty-five minutes or so that it takes to watch the Nightwatchmen, the DVD also includes a version of the movie cut down to about ten minutes, entitled Slumber Party, which may be a bit of a misleading title for a movie whose most risque shot involves a naked woman showering behind a frosted glass door. It's a tribute to the quality of the Nightwatchmen that the full length version is superior to the drastically shortened version. I've seen quite a few movies that would be a heck of a lot better I they were ten minutes long.
Warning! Spoilers ahead!
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Barbara's Rant
This movie is somewhat of a study in contradictions.
The dialogue: On the one hand, these characters suffer from the stilted, unconvincing style of conversation so common in low-budget movies (and many high-budget movies like House of the Dead.) But their dialogue sometimes is almost so boring and pointless as to ring true. Real people talk about hideously boring thing all the time. Often even conversations that are interesting to the participants are mind-numbingly dull to listen to from the outside.
Of course, just because something is true doesn't mean that it belongs in a movie. A conversation that would be boring in real life would be downright deadly in a movie. Yet somehow the conversations in this movie that, by all rights, ought to have put me immediately to sleep manage to be interesting because of the context in which they are placed. For example, there are few things less interesting than listening to someone else talk about her diet. However, watching Dave and Simon listen to Marlena talk about her diet, is tolerable and even amusing. These poor schmucks go to all the trouble to bug this house hoping for pillow fights and Truth or Dare and they get Marlena talking about salad and losing three kilos. It's so pathetic, it's funny.
Then there's Naomi and the girl I can't identify chatting blithely about their friends' romantic entanglements as the undead shamble about the attic above their heads. A pointless conversation in isolation, but an entertaining juxtaposition when paired with the undead.
The characters: Most of the characters in this movie are blatant cliches. Dave and Simon, of course, are classic Weird Science style nerds. (Actually, to be fair, Simon is a more complex character than Dave. He has the charisma to make Dave do his bidding, but not the courage to go rescue the girls himself, at least not right away. And he pays for his cowardice with the life of Anna, the woman he adores. Which was a surprisingly touching scene considering that Simon was watching her shower through a hidden camera at the time.) But there's also Katherine the flirt, Naomi the good girl, the nameless spooky chick, and Anna the tough girl. I'm not quite sure about Marlena. The uptight girl, maybe? The shy girl? Ordinarily I would find such obvious characters annoying and childish. But I sort of like them in this movie, perhaps because I feel a certain affinity for them. I see aspects of myself personified in this movie, personified in such a way as to make them ludicrous and yet likeable, laughable yet comprehensible. When spooky goth girl solemnly intones the words that raise the dead, I see myself in junior high lighting candles and reading poetry aloud. When Simon marches out of the room carrying his axe and his mace, I see myself playing with the wooden swords I bought at Renaissance Festivals when I was a kid. Hmm, actually apparently everyone in this movie reminds me of me when I was eleven years old. Naomi, too. I was always that kid in class who got her homework done early and then felt all self-righteous about it.
I guess it boils down to the fact that I can identify with these people because they're drawn sensitively. This movie is definitely making fun of them, but in the most sympathetic possible way. It's laughing at them, and so am I, but we're both entitled because we understand these characters. We like them. We are them.
The special effects: Now these are just confusing. Some of the blood effects are quite nice, but the zombies look like they're wearing children's green Halloween witch makeup. It's not even moss green or mold green or pus green. It's grass green. Like plastic Easter basket hay. That's just goofy. Maybe it's intentional parody, like moaning "Braaaains," but then why try for realistic blood?
There was one particularly nice lighting effect as Simon, backlit on the porch, watches Dave rush off (waving his axe like a spaz) to rescue the fair maidens. He looks like a warlord surveying his troops as they embark on their attack. I also enjoyed the blue glow of Dave and Simon's special secret spy lair. But then, when Naomi kills the zombie in the little alleyway, there is the strangest splash of computer generated green ooze (which, while a slightly different shade of green, is no less ridiculous than the green zombie faces.) Silly String would have looked better.
Conclusion: This movie and the people who made it have a lot of potential, but there are still some significant kinks to work out, the largest of which is that the movie is not really finished. What possible point is there to having Anna wake up as a zombie at the end of the movie (without any green makeup. Maybe that only happens to male zombies.) if we don't get to see the horror on Simon's face when he confronts the woman he worships, transformed, due to his inaction and fear, into a hideous ghoul? Not to mention the turmoil he would feel - repulsed by her desire to consume human flesh, attracted by the fact that she's still naked. Fortunately even the full length version of this movie is under an hour long, so they could easily shoot another half an hour and glue it onto the end. I wouldn't even have to wait for a sequel.
And, I'm sorry, but I'm just not amused by the reference to Mr. Romero's film studies class. Too obvious. It doesn't make me feel smart (which is, of course, the point of these little inside jokes), it just makes me feel like a big geek.
I would like to play in Simon's Dungeons and Dragons game, though, although I suspect it might be just him playing. Even Dave has never seen his weapons collection before, so I imagine the "game" is just Simon leaping around the room like a loon waving a sword. Maybe I don't want to play in his game after all; he probably dresses up in armor or a loincloth or something.
BARBARA JO
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