Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out! (1989)

Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out! (1989) (see below for trailer and preview images)

Directed and Written by Monte Hellman
 
Starring: Samantha Scully, Bill Moseley, Eric Da Re, Elizabeth Hoffman
 
IMDb 3.6/10                Rotten Tomatoes NO DATA               Metacritic NO DATA

I’m quickly losing faith in this entire series.  You guys know I’m very forgiving when it comes to horror movies.  But, once again, it seems that the filmmakers didn’t care much whether this film was palatable or not.  I feel this whole film was a flop.  I think the story line was implausible.  I think the writing was bad.  I think the character of the blind girl was completely miswritten.  If we were to believe she’s blind, then there were a number of things that she appeared to see but wasn’t supposed to. They also could have made her “visions” filmed in a slightly different style or something to help distinguish between the visions and reality.
 
Now, I have seen Bill Moseley in other films.  I do not put the blame on him for the character he had to play.  I don’t think this character was anymore well written than the blind chick.
 
Also, yet again they chose to repeat original footage from the first film.  I feel that, in doing this twice and using up so much of the movie for it, that it was determined to be a cheap way of lengthening the film an explaining plot details without having to come up with an entirely new story.  
 
While I understand that sequels are meant (usually) to build on one another, the overuse of the original film footage (when it wasn’t a great movie at all to begin with) just adds another layer of salt on an already open wound.  I found myself rolling my eyes a lot and actually doing some research on the film during watching it because it was just so slow moving and uneventful.
 
In the opening seen we see a chick laying down on some sort of hospital gurney-type bed and we are just supposed to watch her lay there I guess.  This goes on for what seems like three to five minutes and then, we enter the slow moving pace of the rest of the film.  
 
There’s some very creepy stuff in this film but it has nothing to do with horror.  The doctor that is conducting the sleep experiment is awfully handsy with the blind chick.  Also, her brother is sitting on the bed in the room she’s staying in, watching her change her clothes as they have a conversation.  Also, I find it slightly disturbing that they decided to make the story about a blind chick who participates in a sleep study in which the doctor is trying to get her to telepathically communicate with a killer Santa coma patient.  I mean, really???  The makers of this film are pretty much assuming I’m going to just automatically buy into a lot of BS and not notice that they did a horrible job of any kind of follow through.
 
That being the case, I put this right next to the first sequel, which was absolutely the worst sequel I have EVER seen.  This one is also one of the worst sequels ever made.  I give props to Bill Moseley for doing what he could with such a crap story and character and no matter how bad this movie was, I’m still a fan of his. But, the rest of the film, I’d go ahead and just avoid this one if I were you.
 
RATINGS
1/5 Stars