Kristy



The members of an unnamed dark web cyber cult are being encouraged to “kill Kristy,” a name whose Latin origin means “follower of God.” Translation: find a pure, beautiful, privileged young woman and kill her. Violet and her crew think they’ve found the perfect target when they zero in on a lone young woman at a remote gas station driving a BMW. But it turns out that appearances can be deceiving. This “Kristy” is Justine, a young woman who may be attending a remote private school, but is doing so with the help of scholarships, financial aid, and a part-time job she works in the evening. The BMW? That belongs to her roommate, who left it for her to use because she felt bad for leaving Justine alone during the Thanksgiving holiday. But now, thanks to a case of mistaken identity, poor Justine is being targeted by a group of murdering sadists intent on spilling her blood for their little ritualistic game. And with only a handful of people left on campus during the holiday, Justine is pretty much on her own if she hopes to survive her four assailants’ little ‘hunt.’



You know, it’s seriously getting harder and harder to find appropriately themed horror movies for holidays. Like, Halloween is super easy, and even Christmas slashers are a dime a dozen. But branch out from that and the offerings start to get pretty barren. Which is just a long-winded way for me to say that I’m running out of Thanksgiving-themed horror fare to watch (or at least I’m running out of decent ones to watch), and it’s kind of bumming me out. I’d honestly think there’d be a lot more of these, because not all of us enjoy pigging out on carbs and falling asleep to football every year. Some of us enjoy variety. So I was kind of excited to find Kristy finally available for viewing, even though its relationship with the holiday is only tangentially linked at best. I mean, there’s talk of the Thanksgiving holiday and a brief mention of pumpkin pie, but that’s about it. Still, I’m glad to have found it, because at the very least it means I get to put off watching Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead for at least another year.


Its visage hovers over me like a dark cloud.

On a technical level, the film is great. I mean, it looks great, it sounds great, and it also has several instances of very nice framing. This is especially appreciated, because most of the film takes place at night, and one of my big pet peeves is night filming that either doesn’t look like it was shot at night, or was shot at night, but it’s so damn dark that you can barely see anything. But thankfully that’s not an issue here, as everything is perfectly clear and visible, even the more frantic action scenes.



Even the acting is good. Though that kinda comes with the caveat that though there are other characters in Kristy, it’s mostly a one woman show featuring Haley Bennett as Justine. Yes, there are other speaking roles, probably about 8 in fact, but most of them are on screen for, eh, maybe five minutes or less. So they’re fine for what they are, but they barely qualify as ‘blink and you’ll miss them’ roles. Even Violet, the lone female assailant with the facial piercings who the film deemed worthy enough to put on most of the posters, barely has any lines. She mostly just stands around and looks menacing (though I will admit that she does a very good job of that). And her three buddies are just nameless goons in tinfoil masks, so there’s not much to comment on there either. But I guess that’s okay, because Haley Bennett does an excellent job of basically carrying the movie on her own, as she slowly transitions from the quiet, meek girl, to “okay, now you dicks have royally pissed me off, so prepare to die” in the span of one evening. Her character might not be perfect, but overall she’s a relatively smart, kind, clever and capable gal who lives up to her ‘final girl’ role.


Aw, what a cute boyfriend. Sure would be a shame if something tragic were to happen to him…

Sadly, my main issue with the film lies with parts of the story (doesn’t it always?) And not in any glaring flaw kind of way, mind you, but more so because a bunch of little, repeatable quirks built up enough to the point where I was beginning to find them very annoying.

Problem #1: The killer’s inexplicable ability to find Justine at any given moment. Like, every other time the poor girl turns around — BAM! — one of them is there. I mean, these guys are just a little too good at hide n’ go seek. I think the film tries to explain this away by establishing the killers as some kind of master hackers that can take over the phone and internet connection, so I guess that means that they could also conceivably access the school’s various security feeds as well if they wanted to. But the film gives no indication of that. And even if they did, it’s a fairly large campus they’re on. It would still take all four of them to monitor all the cameras, constantly, in order to find her. And they’re clearly not doing that, because for every instance where they miraculously show up to where she’s hiding in a dark cubby hole, they lose her again a scene or two later in an area where there would most likely be camera surveillance. The only other conceivable theory is that one or more of them went to that school and memorized the layout, but there’s no indication of that either. Point is: having the killers pop and surprise her one or two times would be fine, but these guys are doing it way too much to be completely believable.


What, is your cult filled with a bunch of psychics? How the hell do you keep doing this?

And Problem #2: Justine is apparently an idiot when under stress. Now, for the most part, Justine is likable and her actions are perfectly believable. But she makes so many of the same tiny, repeated mistakes throughout the film that you kind of want to smack her. For instance, for some reason it takes this chick forever to find a fucking weapon. Early on she runs through the kitchen where she works, and you expect her to pick up something, because she presumably knows where all the shiny, most pointy of objects reside. But does she? No. When she’s with the maintenance man does she pick up something to defend herself with? No. When she finally takes one of the killers out does she at least pry his crowbar out of his cold, dead hand? NO! And it’s absolutely infuriating to watch her keep doing this, especially when it’s compounded with the fact that she also seems incapable of doing something as simple as locking doors behind her, even after she’s gained access to the friggin’ master key to the whole school. I mean, sure, it might not have stopped the killers from coming after her if they really wanted to get to her, but it would have 100% distracted them, or at the very least slowed those suckers down. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d consider “door locking” a basic thing to think about when one is running for your life. I think the one and only time she does lock a damn door is when she finds the maintenance man, and she only did that after scolding him for not locking the door behind her himself when she ran inside his house. Like, really hon? Don’t be a friggin’ hypocrite.


There’s a “rock and glass houses” reference in her somewhere, I just know it….

So yeah, that’s Kristy. Overall it’s a fine little horror/thriller that’s technically competent and well acted, but suffers from a couple of minor, though annoying, story elements. But even then, it’s not too bad. My best comparison is that it’s kind of similar to The Strangers, only less bloody or intense. Which makes it a nice, mild way to get your horror on while you’re busy suffering through overly dry turkey and drowsy because you’ve been eating far too many mashed potatoes. So while it might not be perfect, it’s good for the fun, low-budget slasher/thriller that it is.

Kristy is available on a variety of streaming services.

Kristy is also available on DVD and Bluray, but oddly enough, only as an import.

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