The Pool

Rating:
Summary: Average attempt at Eurohorror
Review: Perhaps no better way exists to compare the gradual dominance of Hollywood over all foreign film markets than to look at the horror genre. Once upon a time, European horror films developed their own intriguing mix of gory scares, with directors like Dario Argento and Mario Bava leading the pack into a brave new world of shriek cinema. Argento started out with the Hitchcock themed "The Bird With the Crystal Plumage" but managed to invent the giallo film in the process, that unnerving cinematic style involving stalk and slash carnage committed by a black-gloved madman. Bava's "The Twitch of the Death Nerve," arguably the first modern slasher film, inspired countless imitators in the form of John Carpenter's "Halloween" and Sean Cunningham's "Friday the 13th." Those halcyon days are now over; replaced with films like "The Pool," a German slasher piece that sets no new precedents and covers no new ground. In fact, this movie by director Boris von Sychowski is an extremely derivative horror picture whose antecedents are "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" more than Argento's or Bava's masterpieces. Obviously, film buffs could advance compelling exceptions to this thesis, but the central premise holds solid. Tinseltown now dominates the world horror market.

If you must think of "The Pool," think of a Eurotrash cast with a sprinkling of Americans and South Americans thrown in for good measure. Set in Prague, the movie follows a group of students graduating from the International High School. Since all these kids will soon go their separate ways, the official leader of the group, Greg (Thorsten Grasshoff), decides to throw one last alcohol fueled bash. Rather than do something boring like party at someone's house or apartment, Greg approaches a friend about getting the gang into an aquatic park in town. Doing so requires breaking into the place, a risky proposition that could involve jail time if the police catch the kids. But how much fun it could be! Romping around the water slides and the pools while drinking the night away sure sounds like fun. Besides, the setting gives the director the chance to put his young cast into skimpy swimsuits. You can guess what happens next: the kids turn up at the pool, start having fun, and then begin expiring in hideous ways. It's stalk and slash time at the water park, and only a few might make it out alive.

The chap hunting down the gang wears a black outfit while wearing a skull mask. He's got his work cut out for him; I think at least a dozen cast members are hanging around the water park when the party begins. The most important characters include Sarah (Kristen Miller), an American worried about her future; Carmen (Elena Uhlig), a German snob harboring a few secrets from her other friends; and the aforementioned Greg. You've also got Kim (Isla Fisher), Svenja (Linda Rybova), Diego (Maximilian Grill), Mike (James McAvoy), and Mel (Cordelia Bugeja) waiting in the wings. A few more characters are present as well. At least you know the body count will be high. A bunch of subplots pop up from time to time, such as hidden relationships, one of the students languishing because she failed her finals, and a cop on the outside methodically tracking the killer to the swimming pool park. Two scenes of carnage take place outside the aquatic environs, one at a house of a mutual friend that recalls the opening scenes of the first "Scream" and another one in the forest. The conclusion, following one extended chase scene after another, made me wonder if the killer was somebody these people knew or Superman. Only the man of steel could take such a pounding and pop back up for more.

The single biggest problem I have with "The Pool," the one thing that really had me grumbling under my breath, is the huge number of cast members. Director Sychowski simply does not possess the skills to juggle this many major and minor characters in a film of this length. It's not a poor reflection on him; many directors could not achieve such a balancing act either. Too, once the bodies start falling it gets even harder to remember who is who. A scorecard with names matched to pictures of the actors might have helped. At first, I thought the various accents of the characters would act as label for figuring out who was who. I was wrong. With the exceptions of the Americans and the Aussie, the voices of the other nationalities began to blend into an unidentifiable Eastern European patois. I halfway expected the murderer to pull off his mask and identify himself as Gavrilo Princip. If you think the murders will save the movie, think again. Sure, a few imaginative incidents take place. The waterslide disaster looks like it draws the most attention from viewers. You know what I thought when I saw it? Dario Argento would have done it better, and done it in a way that would have truly made us cringe. Instead, the scene ends up being a pale imitation of what it could have been.

The DVD from Artisan Entertainment contains a few extras. Trailers, a photo gallery, and a few interviews with cast members all appear on the disc. The picture quality is good, too. It's tough to recommend "The Pool" to horror fans. Slasher film fans will probably like it to some extent, as much as they like any of the other hundreds of similar films out on the market, but viewers seeking a unique experience should probably look elsewhere. "The Pool" deserves three stars for a few good scenes and an occasionally effective stab at atmosphere. Just don't expect to be wowed.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing... Scenes But Oh So Annoying
Review: The characters in this movie are just so annoying and many of them are terribly dubbed. TERRIBLY!! This is like a MENTOS commercial that turns into a slasher movie. The majority of the performers are obviously european and trying to act very American even with their silly dubbed voices. The effort to seem like randy college students is probably the most overdone and surreal try ever to grace any film. It is just ATROCIOUS!! The women are mean, the men are stupidly oversexed and they bop their heads up and down to rock music while drinking and driving and the like. Not that college students don't act that way but in this film it really comes off and more or less like some of the character Lulu's antics in John Waters' POLYESTER. Like getting overexcited to the point of absurdity by the mere thought of liquor or.... This movie wins the prize for leaving the viewer with absolutely no empathy for any of the characters until they start to get killed. If I knew any of these people, I would hate them and be very glad that they had passed on, to put it mildly.
Somewhere along the way the characters become much less annoying and the way they are dispatched is definately some of the more original teen slasher deaths in memory. It does make too much use of the cutaway, meaning you get the idea but you don't usually get to see any actual body penetration.
The killer looks like a cross between the SCREAM ghost mask and the PUNISHER character from MARVEL comics.

This movie is actually fun but you have to wait a good 50 minutes before you actually begin to just give up.

Rating:
Summary: COOL ATMOSPHERE AT LEAST 1.5/5
Review: The Pool is actually pretty decent considering the loads of bad movies these days. I guess this German made film learned from some other films mistakes. The movie is about a group of kids partying after High School Graduation and deicide on an upscale indoor pool which unknowingly lurks a killer. The plot is unoriginal but the atmosphere is nice and the waterslide scene is decent. I WOULD SUGGEST RENTING IT AT LEAST FOR A LAUGH!

Rating:
Summary: The Pool
Review: The Pool is wierd.It tries to be different from the horror genre but ends up trying to hard and fails.The whole setting is pretty ridiculous and dumb.The killers outfit is not scary it is kinda funny.I think I might have jumped once during the whole movie.The acting is also pretty bad.The dialogue is standars horror movie dialogue with a little try at being romantic.The showdown is probably the best part even though that's not real great.Overall I would give the film a D+.Another thing is that the character's aren't likeable.You don't really care who dies.(SPOILERS)Finally I hate how at the end they end the movie by the two main characters kissing and loud music playing without any sadness from the characters or a reappearence of the killer.I don't reccomend you see this one.

When you mix hot teenagers, a vicious murderer, and an abandoned pool, you get movie that is nearly irresistible. THE POOL is that movie, a frightening horror story that begins when 13 hopeful teenagers graduate from high school. Elated at the thought of their new lives in college and the real world, the youngsters find a way to bust into their city's abandoned public pool and throw a huge party. But one of them has an ulterior motive--a desire for revenge that turns out to be fatal.

"The movie's biggest offense is its complete and utter lack of tension."
-- David Cornelius, AMAZING COLOSSAL WEBSITE

Rating:
Summary: AN ORIGINAL HORROR MOVIE!
Review: THIS MOVIE DESERVES SOME RESPECT. IT FEATURES SOME OF THE MOST UNIQUE MURDER SEQUENCES EVER SEEN IN HORROR SLASHER MOVIES. I REALLY LIKED THIS MOVIE AND I THOUGHT THE STORY WAS VERY GOOD.
WHAT MORE CAN I SAY?

Rating:
Summary: Terrible But So Much Fun To Watch
Review: This movie has the most clichés of any horror film I have seen, but here are some thoughts to consider:

1. The pool setting, Prague, and cinematography are all great! Even the acting is good. You can sit there and play identify the accent since it is difficult enough to tell the actors apart having no variety in outfits, hair color, or race to help us out.

2. They don't get killed unaware of what is going on, there is a struggle for survival that makes it all fun and exciting to watch.

3. You can spot the incongrueties with reality and ponder such questions as "Are there no umrella in the Czech Republic?", "How can he not climb into a vent 6 feet of the ground?", and so many more.

4. Some great death scenes worth seeing involving air vents, water slides, and bathroom stalls. Many tributes to classics such as Scream, Aliens, the Poseidon Adventure, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and so on. And it is not predictable, I challenge anyone to identify who will die in the movie before hand (and not 2 minutes before they bite it).

If they had someone rework the script for the clichés and incongrueties, this could have been a classic. Knowing what you are getting into before hand, this is still worth watching as an exciting slasher (they know they are trapped and in danger, unlike many slashers where only the lead ever figures it out and the rest get killed walking aimlessly around the house) or a game with friends in the evening as you explain why each scene makes no sense (it is not always blatant or easily spotted).

Rating:
Summary: Terrible But So Much Fun To Watch
Review: This movie has the most clichés of any horror film I have seen, but here are some thoughts to consider:

1. The pool setting, Prague, and cinematography are all great! Even the acting is good. You can sit there and play identify the accent since it is difficult enough to tell the actors apart having no variety in outfits, hair color, or race to help us out.

2. They don't get killed unaware of what is going on, there is a struggle for survival that makes it all fun and exciting to watch.

3. You can spot the incongrueties with reality and ponder such questions as "Are there no umrella in the Czech Republic?", "How can he not climb into a vent 6 feet of the ground?", and so many more.

4. Some great death scenes worth seeing involving air vents, water slides, and bathroom stalls. Many tributes to classics such as Scream, Aliens, the Poseidon Adventure, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and so on. And it is not predictable, I challenge anyone to identify who will die in the movie before hand (and not 2 minutes before they bite it).

If they had someone rework the script for the clichés and incongrueties, this could have been a classic. Knowing what you are getting into before hand, this is still worth watching as an exciting slasher (they know they are trapped and in danger, unlike many slashers where only the lead ever figures it out and the rest get killed walking aimlessly around the house) or a game with friends in the evening as you explain why each scene makes no sense (it is not always blatant or easily spotted).

Rating:
Summary: Typical Terror Tripe
Review: This movie is all too typical of the slasher film, and evidence that film makers in Germany/Czechoslovakia have no more creativity than our own American ilk. With copious accents, Heineken advertisements and the typical "coming of age meets coming of death" plot, plodding through THE POOL is an exercise in pleading.

The movie starts with your typical SCREAM beginning: girl chats on phone whilst making dinner, gets a spooky call, runs outside, finds her boyfriend dead, and then dies herself. To make matters worse, the killer looks like a reject from Saturday Night Live's "Sprockets" ("now is the time on Sprockets WHERE WE KILL!"). Cue the Dawson's Creek / Felicity soft rock, and we're going down hill within the first five minutes. From there, we follow our cast as they stage an illegal party at the local pool resort.

There are some relatively decent aspects as the movie is expertly filmed with good scenery (it is Europe after all) and some slight twists on expectations: instead of the opening fodder grabbing a knife, she attempts a shotgun, instead of one car playing [bad] music, an envoy of student vehicles engage in synchronizing [awfulness], and instead of using CDs, these supposed "rich kids" use cassettes.

Deaths are nothing too inventive, but two in particular "succeed" visually: the death of the poor girl, Kim (Isla Fisher), is held a bit longer than you'd expect, and the vent killing of Martin (Jason Liggett) is decently conveyed by blood running down his hands as its clenched by a helpful Sarah. The most inventive scene is spoiled before the movie even starts - "knife to water sliding female crotch" is the DVD's flipping menu intro, for God's sake.

With no nudity besides a quick flashing, the standard "heroine overcomes her fear" sub-plot resolves, and the remaining survivors create a love triangle of "you cheated on my boyfriend, but it's ok because WE'RE ALIVE!". The most telling aspect of THE POOL is a line at the end of the movie, "I know what you did last summer...", whose only decent viewer response is "yer goddamn right!".

The 16:9 widescreen DVD includes "Behind the Scenes" (10:37, consisting of clips from the movie, mini-interviews, shots of the water slide kill, etc.), a photo gallery (30 images), filmographies of the directory and cast, Spanish subtitles, and the expected trailer (1:17, Voice over: "It was their last day of term. When you've been there, done that, you need somewhere special to go... but it's about to become a night they'll never forget... because someone is watching, waiting, and ready... to KILL! Now, the only way to stay alive, is to follow the rules." On screen: "Now Running. No Diving. No Splashing. Welcome to the Deep End.").

Rating:
Summary: Masked Killer + Slaughtered Teens = Great Movie
Review: This movie was great. I bought the region 2 (UK) Version and I was really surprised. To me a movie can have the worst plot and as long as the killings are plentiful then Im happy, but this was an exception to that rule. The Pool had a cool plot about some graduating seniors who break into a new swimming facility to party on graduation night. Of course there is a mystery killer lying in wait to ensure that none of the students live to tell about the wild party that they threw. The setting is very unique and is not wasted with the same old murder scenes. This movie has some of the coolest death scenes I have ever seen. All I have to say is imagine sliding down a tube slide, legs spread apart, and seeing a knife come through the floor of the slide right in front of you....OUCH cant even begin to describe it. All things aside this was a surprisingly unique horror film that shows that maybe we havent seen all that slasher films have to offer and it reaffirms that its possible to create an original and thrilling movie. Brilliant

Rating:
Summary: The best straight to video slasher film i ve seen
Review: This movie was the best its better than BLEED .Its like a european version of SCREAM.The opening scene was the best SCREAM like opening i ever saw its the only thing that comes close to a SCREAM opening.See this movie its great.If your the kind of person that likes the whole SCREAM like opening than I recomend CUT,CUT THROAT,FRIDAY THE 13TH 2,SCHOOLS OUT ,AND STUDENT BODIES.