The 6th Friend

 

A Friend In Bleed

The 6th Friend
USA 2016
Directed by Letia Clouston

Okay, so I started watching The 6th Friend as a recommendation from the Shockwaves podcast, which I’ve been listening to for a little while now.* I walked into this one thinking that it was going to be a horror movie but it’s not actually. What it is really is one of those slasher/thrillers which the Americans seem to do so much worse at than the Italians and, frankly, the genre is not one of my favourites (give me a giallo any day) but, having said that, this one plays really well. Of course, the title of the movie somewhat gives the obvious ‘twist reveal’ something of a shout out from the get go but, it’s not a film about surprises... it’s just a nicely, competently put together genre entry which has a certain charm about it compared to many.

So the film starts off with six friends... Joey (played by Jamie Bernadette), Chantelle (Melissa White), Heather (Dominique Swain), Katie (Jessica Morris), Sahara (Tania Nolan) and Becca (Monique Rosario). The girls are having a girly party night in and doing all the drinks etc. Then Becca’s ‘drug connection’ guy brings them all some drugs (I think it’s probably acid? I don’t know about this stuff) and the seven of them party. And then something happens which you don’t see on camera (until it’s revealed much later in the movie) but, you know the girls have got bloody and suffered through some kind of traumatic episode. 

Cut to five years later and one of girls brings the estranged Joey to a borrowed cabin in the woods, where the friends will try and patch things up, hopefully regain their old friendships and heal old wounds. Things don’t go as smoothly as planned though, as there are arguments and the girls all admit to seeing a certain dead person from that night when they are off guard. Then, one of the girls leaves and gets stabbed up by a psycho, who then starts to try and pick the girls off one by one in an affair that seems like a supernatural revenge killing at first. However, like I said, it’s not a horror film and only flirts with those genre tropes. I’m not going to describe the plot line anymore but that’s the set up.

There are a number of good things which make the film stand out though. One of which is the six actresses playing the friends, who seem to have good chemistry and, bearing in mind I’m male and not really privy to what goes on at a girly night out, the dialogue sounded pretty authentic to my ears.

Some of the lighting and shot designs are kinda cool too. There’s a lovely bit of set dressing on one of the bedrooms in the cabin which has unusual angles made by the sloping roof over it and they’ve dressed it so the wallpaper has vertical stripes, which of course accentuates these off kilter angles and makes the room, when filmed from certain positions, look like something out of The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari. So that was nice.

Oh, and the last thing I want to mention as a huge positive on what is turning out to be a very short review is the music composed by Holly Amber Church. It’s actually very much like the lower key moments of John Carpenter’s score for his own movie The Fog at various points and I felt really connected to this one. It raises the bar for this film because, often so many of these smaller films don’t have a good score to support and highlight the atmosphere but this one is pretty good (and it’s a shame there’s no CD release of it). 

There are also some slight negatives to the movie, such as how quickly the girls are scattered into individuals to allow themselves to get picked off rather than going for the whole safety in numbers bit but, it’s a means to an end to keep the movie going, I guess... so I can’t complain. The end twist also seemed a little unsatisfying because, like I said earlier, you can kind of see it coming and the little epilogue to the conclusion of the movie is nice but doesn’t really say a heck of a lot.

All that being said, though, I found The Sixth Friend to be a very entertaining watch and mostly had a good time with it. If you are into slasher type films then this would probably satisfy on ticking most of your slasher boxes and, like I said, the actresses are all pretty good and certainly easy on the eye. Definitely worth checking out one rainy evening when you’ve got nothing else on. 

*At time of writing, during the pandemic lockdown. It’s now been replaced by Colors Of The Dark (sic) podcast, which is also really great.