Paintball Massacre (2020) Review

Paintball Massacre (2020) Review

Old school friends go on a paintball trip, miles away from civilization. Things go horribly wrong when they discover a cold-blooded masked killer is among them. Soon the paint is mixed with blood as they fight to survive their school reunion.

As I have a weakness for British horror flicks when the opportunity to review PAINTBALL MASSACRE was presented to me I got rather excited. Add to that a cast that features actress/comedian Katy Brand, Lee Latchford-Evans (from pop band Steps) and featuring a cameo from HELLRAISER’s Nicholas Vince, buffering up an amiable cast of relevant unknowns, everything would appear to be in place for a comedy/horror delight. Unfortunately, and despite a very good cast and top drawer production values, director Darren Berry’s movie tends to aggravate more than entertain.

Also for a film to totally engage me I have to be able to buy into its premise. Given how much the bunch at the school reunion despise each other you would have to question why any of them would want to give up their free time to meet up with people they evidently never liked to begin with. Couple that with a script that affords our protagonists the luxury to separate off from the main group and toddle off for cosy natters seems to fly in the face of their fraught situation. As for the killer he proves to be rather too leisurely at offing his prey and I’m not sure why. With all their yabbering and bickering it’s not like he can’t determine exactly where they are.

KILLER WEEKEND (AKA FUBAR) covered similar ground in 2018 with a bickering stag party on a survival weekend coming face-to-face with ravenous undead. Here we have a paintball school reunion (just ten people, some reunion), and whereas both films are British, mix comedy with gore and have characters at constant odds with each other, the aforementioned movie carried it off. On PAINTBALL MASSACRE’s plus side Step’s Lee Latchford-Evans proves that he can act which is not something that you can say about a number of other pop stars who took a break from warbling their tonsils for a shot of film work. If it wasn’t for the constant infighting and bickering – even the guys that pick up the school reunion for paintballing feel the urge to be assholes to everyone too – I might have overlooked the plot’s gaps in logic and enjoyed PAINTBALL MASSACRE much more.

Watch the Official Trailer