Memorial Day Massacre is just one of those movies where it doesn't offer a ton of explanation, back-story, or motivation. Sure it's there, but it's not important, and the moments when it's being told in the movie are just to "be complete", not to actually give the story depth or to make sense. If this movie simply had it's killer going around doing things it would get instantly discredited, so instead they give it a flimsy plot just to get away with calling this a "movie" and then they moved on.
So that said, the plot is about a weird hermit guy living on a park way out in the middle of nowhere. A bunch of people come and visit, being disruptive and looking like idiots, and soon enough our hermit guy starts killing them. Turns out the hermit might be the son of the park ranger. My favorite line? When the ranger says "He might be my son," one of the people there says "Who cares?!" Good point. He's a fucking killer, who cares if he's your son or not.
The kills range from sort of lame to not that bad, but most are fairly bland. I have to say that for a guy who was raised out in the woods and can't speak or read or anything, he is very smart. There are the smarts that make sense, like how he plants traps and hunts people and fights well, etc. But there are also the smarts that doesn't make sense: he knows how to open and chop up wires in the engine of a car, he knows how to get a bulldozer started and moving, and he knows specifically how to disable a radio.
They're all just excuses to have these idiots on the mountainland die and that's fine. They get portrayed in ways that typically make us want them to die. They're either idiotic, destructive, stupid, or all of the above. There is no one truly innocent in the movie except maybe the park ranger, but he ends up dying too! On accident, though.
Now to address the whole name thing. The movie's alternate title is supposedly "Son of Sleepaway Camp". This is because Sleepaway Camp (in itself a sort of Friday the 13th rip off) was pretty popular and spawned a ton of sequels. This movie was re-titled to Son of Sleepaway Camp to try and capitalize off the success. It of course is not related to the Sleepaway series in any way, but yeah. There you go. Is it a rumor or it is true? I have no idea. I just know that's what the internet tells me.
The score was actually pretty good again too, more in your face and bizarre than The Forest. Also, the higher amount of people and death scenes, some see-through shirts on girls, and plenty of laughable fun make this movie a whole ton better than The Forest. MDM has a big focus on the killer much like The Forest, but he has no lines, is more entertaining to watch, and actually can pull off some very cool stunts. I wonder if he had a background in stunt performing. The actor doesn't have any other credits on IMDb so who knows.
Those points made me feel optimistic about it, plus I can imagine someone who actually likes this movie. All said it's not bad, it's just that there are other movies that are far better. But I'd take this over some of those Jason, Chucky, or Halloween sequels any day. I'll give it 2.5 stars.
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