User Reviews

What if you had the genius of Hitchcock's ROPE and took a giant crap on it..this foul-mouth, modern updating on the perfect murder(s) has this psycho named Nick(Rick Otto, looking like a young Ethan Hawke, without the talent, merely a cocky obnoxious a$$hole)whose holding a going-away party for his pal, Jimmy(Lucas Babin)who is (un)surprisingly missing as their friends gather together to drink and smoke weed(..often through this very unusual bong)wondering where the man-of-honor is. Quietly, Nick murders each one, through various methods when the others as a group are away, developing his perfect plan in place. The professor, obsessed with the art of crime and death, Hal(Glenn Quinn)is who inspired him to attempt such a feat. Despite Nick's use of damaging weapons, the director cleverly avoids showing any grisly violence. The film really plays with the wickedness of the situation as various people attempt to leave the party, dying at Nick's hand when he gets them alone. "R.S.V.P" is almost completely set in Nick's uncle's pad, except for the opening sequences setting up the rest of the film(..a murder investigation leading into a class, taught by Hal, and the beer drinking toast between Nick and Jimmy). Brandi Andres portrays Jim's girlfriend, Nick's ex, who the screenplay sets up as the final girl. Jason Mewes pretty much plays his Jay character from "Clerks" as a wise-cracking druggie, care-free and the life of the party. He easily steals his scenes if you can appreciate his brand of comedy. Despite director Mark Anthony Galluzzo's ambitions, this is really just another run-of-the-mill slasher where you realize that the killer will eventually make that one mistake, despite somehow amazingly succeeding in carrying out a parade of murders without getting caught thanks to a screenplay that allows him to, which will lead to his downfall.Veterans character actors Jonathan Banks and Lynch icon Grace Zabriskie portray Walter and Mary Franklin, Jimmy's uncle & aunt. I treasured their time on screen, because they bring a sense of relief that you can appreciate, especially once they "exit" the film and we're back stuck with the hard-partying brood. The film is full of sequences involving discussions on death and those whose lives revolved around murder...along with plenty of sex jokes and Mewes tongue wagging at the sights of tight female asses in jeans. Slasher fans might enjoy some of the tongue-in-cheek murders such as what Nick does to an uninvited guest, a neighbor from next door who interrupts the well-developed plan.

this was one of the worst movies i've ever seen. it was neither a horror, thriller, nor comedy. it was nothing.

this film is about a graduate student of criminal psychology, someone obsessed with serial killers, who decides to murder all of his friends at a party. that is the summary of the film. no spoiler there.

but i couldn't even write a spoiler here if i wanted to. we all expect a film to be more than what is written in the film summary. a hook, twists, turns, something to look forward to, something to question. this film has none of that.

furthermore, the murders are not suspenseful. they are not funny, nor are they entertaining.

compared to hitchcock? it shouldn't even be compared to a movie.

i give this a 1 out of 10. one because i don't fault the actors for this terrible attempt at a story.

A college student invites a bunch of his friends to a going away party for a friend. Unknown to them he has already killed the guest of honor, hidden the body in a trunk and is going to kill everybody else. Yup--it's a ripoff of "Hitchcock's "Rope" with a boring twist.

I saw this on FEARnet out of idle curiosity. It has Quinn (who I always liked) in his last feature film and Jason Mewes who can be amusing. Unfortunately this is a boring, stupid "horror" movie which has the villain cracking non-stop bad jokes while killing people. There's next to no violence (almost all the killings are done off camera), VERY little blood or gore and no sex or nudity at all! It's mostly long, boring pointless conversations between uninteresting characters with LOUD lousy music blaring. The only clever or original thing about this was the playing of classical music during the killings. Lousy acting too. Not worth watching at all. Skip this one.

Whilst this film has ambition and a laudable goal, due to heavy-handed foreshadowing a perceptive viewer can deduce the 'climax' within the first ten minutes of the film. The subsequent dénouement (something that might have made the predictable climax forgivable, if handled well) is, unfortunately, quite. . . well. . . stupid.

The killer, previously packaged as a warped genius, delivers a dimwitted dialogue at the end of the film that is devoid of much needed surprises and more reminiscent of something that a James Bond villain might say than of something that a twisted serial killer would. That the film itself ends on an upbeat note is the final nail in the coffin.

The special features on the DVD showcase an subplot casting the Professor as a serial killer (possibly as The Quick Brown Fox) that, if it hadn't been clipped from the finished film, would have made things much more interesting (though not any less predictable, due to the way the cut scenes were filmed).

In fact, that is the biggest problem with RSVP. The director seems intent on revealing all of the secrets up front, making this less like a Hitchcock film (or Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians) and more like a bad Columbo episode with a few extra bodies.

RSVP IS a run-of-the-mill slasher flick. (It's not a black comedy. It's more influenced by teen slasher flicks than anything else; no dark humor to be found here.) Actually; it's possibly worse; there are almost no surprises in it all; most of the movie is filled with a bunch of college kids drinking and getting high at a party while waiting for the guest of honor. The revelation that said guest is already there - only dead - would be marginally shocking, except that the killer fully details his plan out to his victim at the beginning of the movie. (It's also worth noting that said victim has been taking criminal psychology courses WITH the killer, and is very aware of his infatuation with murder; why this victim never even slightly suspects that he may soon become of a victim of the killer, who explains a story of murder in which the circumstances are quite similar to the ones HE is PRESENTLY in, is beyond me!)

So yes, right from the get go, you know who did it. And you know the "twist" - a party is held for the victim, everyone waits for him to come, he's already there, dead, but no one knows it. So the entire movie is filled with boring cliché party scenes, and cheap scares where the killer almost kills someone, but then changes his mind. Even if we hadn't seen this before, it would still suck. The killer tries to kill everyone, someone survives, blah blah blah. Boring plot, typical ending.

The one "saving grace" of this film is Jason Mewes, playing his familiar "Jay" role; it ain't the most original thing, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't rent this movie just for him. It's definitely not enough to save the movie from crap-dom, but he'll still make you laugh. Oh, and another point goes towards the good photography/music at the beginning, which actually made me think, "Wow, this is gonna be pretty good!" I hate it when I'm wrong.

I realize that most of these reviews default to comparing RSVP to Rope; a film which I've seem but much too long ago for this review to be any sort of comparison. Instead I'll discuss this film on it's own terms.

There's a lot of really fun stuff going on in the beginning with the pseudo-intellectual conversations about murder as a sort of art form, initially leading me to believe I was in for a very clever sort of slasher film. RSVP fails to deliver, mostly because the writer couldn't substantiate all the clever banter with any sort of compelling story. Perhaps it's different since we're well aware of who the killer is from the beginning, but this potential is never maximized. Instead the film turns into a fairly generic slasher except the audience doesn't even have the pleasure of trying to piece together who the killer really is.

What kills RSVP is that it starts out as a somewhat interesting meditation of serial killers and murder, and degenerates quickly into the standard fare of drinking, drugs, etc. No suspense is built because it quickly becomes evident how our killer is operating. There needed to be some kind of payoff near the end, but all we get is another jilted youth. All of his musings on murder amount to nothing by the end of the film, and however interesting the killer may have seemed in the beginning, he's just another idiot who loses control by the end. I give it a 4 for keeping me pretty interested for the first half, but midway through the 2nd act my mind wanders.

I loved this movie!! It was so well written, and the cinematography was amazing. I also thought the parallels with bullfighting were very interesting, (the set design, and the different props throughout the film, pictures, etc.). I thought that this was so much more intelligent than the gory slasher flicks that have been shoved in our faces over and over again in the last decade. It's refreshing to see a film that is actually thoughtful, and well written. I thought Glenn Quinn's performance was outstanding. He was such a talented actor, and his death was so tragic. It's a shame that we will never see the sequel that was intended to be filmed. I thought this film was brilliant, and is one of my all time favorites.