Sweet Sixteen

Melissa and her parents have just temporarily relocated to a small Texas town for a couple of months so that her father can oversee the work at a local dig site. Being the new girl in town, she’s naturally struggling to make some friends, something she’d really like to do because her sixteenth birthday is just around the corner. But her struggle to meet new people and endear herself to the populace ends up further compounded when the first two boys to show even the slightest amount of interest in dating her both wind up brutally stabbed to death after only having just met her, suddenly turning the unassuming new girl in town into local law enforcement’s prime suspect.

Then again, if the ladies in this town didn’t walk around in dank, skull-filled gothic manors with candelabras maybe people wouldn’t be so suspicious.

It’s been a while since I watched a slasher, and Sweet Sixteen has been on my watchlist for months (okay, let’s be real, it’s probably been years at this point), so I figured a viewing was long overdue. To my dismay, it’s not quite the straight-up teen slasher I was expecting after reading the description. It’s actually more of a mystery thriller with some good ole bloody slasher bits thrown in for good measure. Which, though not exactly what I wanted, is still a good mix even if I was initially slightly disappointed. But, considering I’d never heard of this movie before, I was actually kind of surprised how well put together all the interconnecting story bits were for such an unknown property. I still ended up being a little disappointing by the end, but I was also pleasantly surprised by how entertaining it ultimately was.

Hands down, the film’s best attribute is its cast. The movie features Bo Hopkins, Susan Strasberg, Steve Antin, Sharon Farrell, Patrick Macnee, Don Shanks, Dana Kimmell, and Michael Pataki. And though you may not know a lot of those names off the top of your head, I guarantee that if you are at all a fan of 70’s and 80’s TV and movies, then most of those faces should be instantly recognizable. That is just a shockingly impressive group of actors for a little slasher flick, and they all do a great job, even the younger cast members that didn’t really have that many roles under their belt at the time. Yeah, some of the actors may only be familiar because they play the same part in every other film they’re in (Bo Hopkins yet again portrays a put-upon sheriff, which feels like 50% of the roles he ever took in his lifetime at this point), but even when the plot gets a bit muddled or cliche, the skill and overall likability of the cast manages to keep you engaged and interested.

No, like, seriously dude, did you just specifically seek out these roles at some point, or is it just some big coincidence?

Speaking of the plot, I found it to be equal parts interesting and unsatisfying. The overall mystery aspect is actually pretty impressive for a cheap 80’s slasher like this, certainly better than one would expect from this genre, anyway. It might be filled with a bunch of things that have become cliche at this point, and the killer shouldn’t be too hard to figure out if you’re even marginally paying attention to what’s going on, but you can still tell that everything was extensively plotted and well thought out, and I think that, along with its very likable cast of characters, helps make up for a lot of the story’s shortcomings. I know I for one always appreciate it when it feels like my cheap slasher was actually thought out, rather than simply shat out, in half a day.

What it doesn’t make up for though, is the ending. After all that good pacing and carefully planned buildup, the film’s climax just lands with an ungraceful SPLAT (a THUD, a WHOMP WHOMP, if you will), really muddling all the good vibes the movie had spent so much time accumulating up to that point. I’m not really sure what went wrong here after doing so well for the rest of the movie, but I think the filmmakers were hoping that that ending was going to hit with a lot more emotional weight, but… it just doesn’t. Mostly because we simply don’t have enough of the necessary background info for it to do that. And because we don’t have that all important info, the ending just sort of happens, and once you realize that’s it, THAT’S what the movie was building up towards, and now it’s all over, you’re just sort of left thinking, “Oh…well, bummer.”

Incidentally, that’s also the same thought I have whenever a character randomly materializes in a dark, gaping void.

On top of the unimpressive ending, the film also has a very unhealthy helping of racism/xenophobia as one of the film’s subplots. Which is something that might work in certain instances in other films, but in the case of this movie seems wholly shoehorned in and unnecessary. At first I actually did think it was going to have more bearing on the overall plot. It certainly seemed like the film was trying to work up to it in any case. But by the time the movie got to the end it was clear that they could have still kept the whole subplot, which centered around suspicion and distrust, by replacing it with something as simple as a ‘feud’, and their little sub-story would have still worked out just fine. But no, they had to make some kind of statement (what that statement is though I’m still not sure), meaning some portions of the movie end up feeling unnecessarily awkward. An impressive feat, considering half the film’s cast is made up of gangly, awkward teenagers.

But on the plus side, at least most of them were cute.

But despite my complaints (of which there are many) I still ended up really liking Sweet Sixteen. It’s not what I thought it was going to be, and the filmmakers clearly made some weird choices that I don’t particularly like. But I still thought it was a fun little mystery/slasher. I think the ending keeps it from the cult classic that it could have been, but it’s still an entertaining flick that’s better than the sum of its parts. So if you’re a fan of the slasher genre, this one is a solid choice to check out.

Sweet Sixteen is available on a variety of streaming services.

Sweet Sixteen is also available on DVD.

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