Day 27

Party Hard Die Young (2018)

Directed by Dominik Hartl

When Julia and her friends, a group of hard partying German teens, head out to a once in a lifetime island-wide celebration, they think it’s all fun and games, that is until their friends start turning up dead. Now Julia has to figure out who is killing her friends, and why, before she’s the only one left. In a lot of ways Party Hard Die Young is very reminiscent of many 80s slasher movies, it’s about teens who like alcohol, drugs and sex with the whodunit elements of having the killer wear an interesting mask. I consider those good things because I am a huge fan of slasher movies in general and 80s slashers will always have a special place in my heart. At its best, Party Hard Die Young feels like a throwback that’s channeling all the fun violence and sleaze that old-school slashers are known for and I was into this for the first half. Not great, not groundbreaking, but fun times that you don’t always get with modern slashers. That is, until the mystery is revealed and the plot is laid out, and everything crumbles.

Credit where credit is due, the twist is foreshadowed quite well and I figured out what was going on about when the movie wanted me too, so that proper structure is there. The problem isn’t the structure but the twist itself, and not even just the twist but how the twist is handled that completely ruins this movie and destroys all the goodwill I had for Party Hard Die Young. I hate spoilers so if you want to know exactly what happened drop a comment down below and I’ll discuss it further there, but suffice it to say, the twist makes nearly all the teens completely irredeemable, which might work in a more nihilistic movie but it just comes across as very strange and misplaced here. It was such a disappointment, especially considering that I was rooting for this movie from scene one and actually enjoying myself quite a bit. Sadly, I do not recommend Party Hard Die Young, if not for one massive misstep I enjoyed the movie but that doesn’t make up for the problems here.