The slasher genre adds yet another unimpressive notch to its belt this year with Most Likely to Die. Heather Morris stars as Gaby, final girl in a passel of hapless victims targeted by a disgruntled high school classmate at their ten-year reunion, set in a remote house. The killer—decked out in a laughable cap and gown with papier mache mask—hunts his prey based sort of (but not really at all) on their senior class superlatives of a decade prior.
Most Likely to Die is the epitome of the uninspired low-budget slasher. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with low-budget filmmaking. In fact, the horror genre lives off of low-budget, single location films like Most Likely. Beyond simply not costing much to make, they have little risk, a built in audience, and can easily sell to a streaming or VOD service, therefore negating any real financial risk. More so, it’s easy enough to cast the film. New or emerging talent is hungry for the roles, and more recognizable entertainers often pick up a supporting role for the fun of it. (In this case, Jake Busey and Perez Hilton are the most familiar faces.) But none of the above ought to excuse a film for being bad, and Most Likely to Die represents the least aspirational work of its genre.
Neither writer Laura Brennan nor director Anthony DiBlasi does anything to reinvent the slasher trope. They populate their film with characters that commit a greater crime than stereotype—they’re entirely unbelievable. When confronted with the first corpse discovered during the weekend, the characters turn off the lights and reminisce about high school. Sure, they take strides to contact the police, but they give up pretty quickly and regress to revisiting who liked who a decade ago. As the killer parades through the house, slicing heads off with his tassled and bladed cap, there’s no motivation to root for anyone’s survival. We don’t like these characters. We don’t connect with them. And we don’t give a darn if any of them live. In fact, the sooner they die, the sooner we arrive at the mercy of the end credits. Even the most short sighted member of the graduating class could see that Most Likely to Die is most likely to be one of the worst (slasher) films of the year.
