FINAL EXAM could have been much worst. I've seen much worse than this. But what's really odd about this HALLOWEEN copy is the fact that the producers copied almost everything about the John Carpenter film except for one major detail: the killer or the killer's reason for killing. Ooopps! Something tells me that after watching the film, the producers couldn't figure out exactly what they left out from HALLOWEEN. It's quite obvious from a horror fan's Point-of-View though. FINAL EXAM has some good moments, and even though it takes forever to get going, when the killer strikes, the film sorta becomes suspenseful. The problem is, we never know anything about why the murderer is going on this rampage, at this specific time, etc. They hint at a back-story (a girl committed suicide after she was refused by a sorority and we can assume that whoever's doing the killings must be a relative) but that's just not enough.

The thing that makes the original HALLOWEEN so great (forget the sequels) is that it builds a mystery around Michael Myers without telling us too much about him (which is the problem of the sequels). In FINAL EXAM, we know NOTHING about the killer. He looks like a prop guy who stood in for the killer. Had the producers actually written a reason for the killer's motivations, I think this would have a been a passable flick. As it is right now, it's just pointless.

The only really original aspect about FINAL EXAM is Radish, who's so annoying that he actually becomes fun to watch. What a uber geek! Without Radish, FINAL EXAM would have been completely forgettable or as anonymous as those no-name products you find in a supermarket.

Nobody but Hitchcock fans watch thrillers for the art. Everyone else is looking for actual thrills. The slasher cycle began with Halloween, and John Carpenter provided the blueprint for the imitations that followed - suspense, jump scares, false frights that turn out to be nothing, doom-laden musical notes... The mechanics of the low-budget thriller are familiar and easily achieved.

Final Exam borrows a few tried and true items from Halloween's box of tools. The killer is shot from the waist down or partially screened by trees to appear remote and menacing. Bright light glints off a bloody blade on an otherwise dark night. But the little here fails to actually generate suspense. The viewer is merely reminded that suspense-building is a necessary element of the process. The problem is that the building blocks of a slasher film are too thinly spread and separated by long stretches of time spent among poorly drawn and uninteresting characters. This is a common fault in slasher movies but one which can be at least partially offset by lively pacing and occasional action. Unfortunately, the film's pace is leaden and what little action occurs is so poorly staged that it fails to excite a viewer perpetually starved for distraction.

This is Final Exam's fatal fault. Nobody renting a slasher movie is expecting character interest on the level of The Big Chill or the epic sweep of The Godfather. The viewer's expectations are already modest. But providing more stimulation than what is minimally required to keep the viewer awake should not represent undue hardship for a slasher movie's creator.

No thriller worth the name should be this boring. Cinematic entertainment needs to be entertaining. Writer-director Jimmy Huston clearly slept through the lesson in film school that emphasized keeping things moving along.

Is this an exposé on how juvenile mentality, hazing insensitivity and substance abuse plague college campuses around the country? Actually, no it's not. It's just a tame slasher film about bunch of worthless, blabbermouth college kids sitting around and behaving brain dead for an hour before the director shows us some mercy by throwing in a psychotic killer. No one has the patience to endure this notoriously boring exercise of false alarms, college hijinks, endless talk that amounts to nothing and dull murders.

Score: 1 out of 10