THE RESORT is a new horror movie where four friends go to a haunted resort that has long been abandoned. With a runtime of just 1 hour and 15 minutes, my expectations were quite high. And yes, that was in part due to the brilliant Shudder horror movie Host that worked extremely well with its short runtime.

Somehow, this new horror movie managed to be slow despite its short runtime. It could just as well have been a short film. It takes almost half its runtime to even arrive at the haunted resort that this movie is supposedly all about.

The Half-Faced Girl

The four friends are going to the haunted resort as a birthday treat for one of the girls in the group of friends. Here, they hope to find the infamous “Half-Faced Girl” which is a really bad name for a ghost if you don’t enunciate it very clearly. I didn’t know that the name of the ghost was “half-faced girl” until I saw the credits.

You try saying “half-faced girl” three times in a row to someone and ask them what they hear. Minor detail, I know, but before we even got to this “infamous” ghost, the movie had already dragged on for more than half of its runtime.

Also, it was an extremely unbelievable group of friends who seemed to know very little about one another. The girls were the classic “hot chicks” with perfect make-up, crop tops, and booty shorts, which is (of course!) the obvious attire to go check out an old abandoned resort.

The cast of abandoned resort horror movie

I don’t want to talk badly about the actors. They did what they could with this story. Granted, actor Michael Vlamis did have to play a very unlikable character, but he did do it well. And Brock O’Hurn (whose claim to fame was a YouTube video about his man-bun) is a huge beast of a man, who played his character, Chris, with much warmth.

I’d definitely want him to come along for any haunted resort trip. And despite his somewhat strange way to fame, Brock O’Hurn worked really well in this movie for me. For the record, I am a gay girl, so I’m not exactly swayed by his manly charm. He just worked well and I could see him work really well in other horror movies.

The girls in the group are Bree and Lex (because, of course, that would be their names) and they’re portrayed by Michelle Randolph and Bianca Haase respectively. Again, I can’t say anything bad about the actors, but their characters were only written as shells of real people.

You can watch The Resort in select theaters and On-Demand

Taylor Chien is the writer and director of The Resort which I could easily have seen as a good horror short film. As a feature film, I felt very indifferent about the story overall. Forget about the whole haunted resort thing, which did actually work well.

The problem was with the rest of the story which was built around very shallow characters and a friendship that felt very unrealistic. They didn’t seem to know each other really which was highlighted by having them “reveal” very basic details about their childhood. Something good friends would surely already have talked about.

But hey, it was good for the story and I get that. You just need to make the dialogue smarter to highlight that these characters are away of things in the past of a friend that might influence their reactions. Yeah, I wasn’t impressed nor did I feel entertained. A few horror scenes worked well, which is why this should have been a solid short film instead.

THE RESORT is out in Select Theaters & On Demand on April 30, 2021