Final Exam (1981)
What's It About?
It's finals week at a North Carolina college. As the campus empties out and the last few students prepare to take their tests, a killer picks them off one by one.
Is It Any Good?
The slasher boom of the 1980s is a thing of legend and even people don't like this type of movie are dimly aware that their rise and fall happened during the 80s. Naturally you're going to get some great movies and some horrible movies and a whole bunch in-between but the genre has as much merit as any other in the right hands.
So we have a decent setting for a slasher film. It's a college campus at the end of the year, it's largely empty but there's still an eclectic pool of people that the story can pull from for a list of potential victims. So far we're off to a good start. Okay now we've got a good group of core characters with their own quirks and storylines. We've got the Frat leader who kind of looks like Kurt Russell and has villainous qualities, we've got the big dumb football player crony played in a wonderfully animated fashion, the effete nerd who has a nice little chemistry with the mousy obvious final girl, we've got the overly pretty blonde who probably has nudity in her contract, the lovers who are doomed from scene one and they're all played competently and interestingly. I like these characters and their lives on campus, these story fragments are a good foundation upon which to lay a slasher movie.
Now, let's talk about killers, these movies usually work best when we don't know who the killer is and... oh, we saw his face in the first scene. Okay, just a bit of stumble there, that's not a deal breaker. After all, everyone knew who Michael Myers was and he was still scary. What's really important is that he has a backstory that really sells that final act rug pull and- What? Oh, we never find out who the killer actually is or his motivation? He's just some guy? You know what? That's fine, perfectly fine, we didn't know who the killer was from Black Christmas was either so that's- it's fine.
What's really important is that the killer have an iconic look, a weapon, perhaps even a gimmick. Okay so you've decided to use a large man with long hair and sideburns, wearing a green coverall, and carrying a butcher knife. Did you even try? Nope, you know what? It's fine, I'm being uncharitable, you clearly have a vision for this movie that I'm not seeing. So tell me what memorable kills you have planned? What? Mostly just off-screen stabbings and a guy who gets joked to death using a weight machine? You know what, let's just forget about the killer for right now.
Okay, so we got this great character and setting, we can work on the killer later. So I'm interested in these characters and their stories, I'm interested to see how all these plot threads pay off once the killing starts? What? You mean to tell me that none of the plot threads pay off? They all just end abruptly as people start to die until final girl is left and her and the killer square off in a lackluster ending? This is terrible, you've maybe created the most pointless and generic slasher film ever made. You have no story, no hook, no clever kills, no neat gimmick. This is a boat without a rudder, why would anybody want to watch this movie? I mean it's perfectly watchable but there could not be a generic slasher than Final Exam. There are plenty of inept slasher films but this one has committed the cardinal sin of being bad in the least interesting way.
Watch, Toss, or Buy?
Unless you're a slasher film completionist there's very little here to entice you. It's perfectly watchable but I'd still give it a toss.