KingOfHungary Review of Head Count

Head Count (2018)

Interesting and creepy that falls apart for the end completely.

[3/10 · 3 May 2020]

A very interesting take, with legitimately creepy undertones, where the killer is disguised as one of the people in the group intermittently, which when you think about a concept like that, and how it is shown in the movie, gives a chilling feeling. On one hand, you could say that some of the actors are hamming it, but they're portraying college kids, the performances are plausible. Otherwise the acting is fine, the setting is fine. The story works well, up to a very interesting and breathtaking scene where they go back into the house and they find sources of suicidal applications, but this is where the story just derails and falls apart to a frustratingly bad final act. Half the people simply disappear at that point, completely. In a terrible, terrible decision, they decide to actually show the creature in its natural form, and it looks terribly cheap, embarrassing. Then, the movie goes to the end where the rest of the characters simply die off in a rapid fashion, with zero fightback, zero countering, zero attempt at stopping, slowing, or defeating the adversary. This was the key problem that the film has, there is no context to why this is happening, how it could be conceivably ended, how it might be countered, anything of that nature. It just happens, and it's frustrating to have something this interesting just have it appear, kill everyone, and that's that. The very end makes zero sense as well. Why and how is it still there once it killed everyone? What is its purpose going to be? Nobody said his name five times anymore, so it's just going to pretend to be someone else for no reason, and stop killing, because again, he wasn't summoned by anyone alive. And if he is, he is going to what, appear where he was summoned, and disappear from where he is currently living a normal life as the person he is disguised at? It's inexplicably stupid, and was completely unnecessary.