Death Rink

 

I'm reeling right now. The only positive thing I can say about Death Rink is that it made me feel a little bit nostalgic. Way back when I was 18, I worked at a skate rink around here named Skate West, and man do I have plenty of good and not-so-good memories being employed behind the scenes at that place. I never thought of all sanctions, on here, that I would even need to say something about the experiences working there, but some of the actual "labor" (if you want to call it that) that takes place in this throw away terror flick for 80% of the 74 minutes it spits in your face with is really what I had to do working there. The owner was always drunk all the time, he would always try to get in the pants of the tall, leggy blonde that worked with us off and on and his mom would show up once in awhile to yell at him in front of all of us while we were cleaning up or getting things ready for a birthday party the next day. The topper that I will never forget until the day that my empty little heart finally stops beating is the time he invited me up to his apartment where he lived upstairs above the DJ booth. Yep. There was a big, double paned window where no one could ever see into it and everyone always tried to theorize about why it was there-I found out that day. It was a literal full scale apartment with a shower and a fridge and everything-the walls and the floor were covered in this fucking atrocious 70's brown and orange carpeting that made me feel like vomiting and gave me a surreal feeling of vertigo, not being able to process the fact that this inebriated bastard that owned and ran the skating rink lived upstairs. Fucking weird, man. I would never be able to do that.

  But now that we're here to talk about how many cinematic sins in which Death Rink commits, let's start getting down to it. Because there's a lot of them. I'm going to get going with the main one and just say it-it's goddamn boring. The biggest shit stain on this film's hands is that it bores the audience to death faster than when the "kills" start finally happening, and that's when there's only roughly 25 minutes left of the 74. So the first three quarters make you agonize and writhe in your own salty tears of tedium and you'll be saying "is it over yet?" quicker than if you had diarrhea after eating a whole crave case in one sitting. That's just for starters. The dialogue is fucking flat, the score is haphazardly generic and the acting-my God the acting-is so harshly wooden that I could most likely cut through it with a chainsaw. Everyone just felt stiff and unsure of themselves most of the time which was heavily evident onscreen and weighed this production down almost just because of how abysmally boring this fucking thing is. I really can't stress enough that this might have been better off as a 30 minute short as apposed to a 74 minute one, and the reveal at the end of who's wearing the alien mask snuffing everyone out is so unpolished and full of blemishes. So frustrating. I really wanted to like Death Rink, but the ball bearings in my skate wheels weren't oiled up enough for this one.

Was this filmed at a skate rink in New Mexico? I saw a New Mexico flag.

Ooooh, roller skates with eerie music layered over them. Spooky.

That baggie doesn't have anything in it. Oh, the rest of it is in the toilet.

A pair of sunglasses, a switchblade and a dimebag. That's one helluva night at a skating rink.

"Toliet's kinda trippin."

How desperate are you that you're going to smoke a tea bag as a replacement for weed? Fucking loser.

Dude, you don't put mustard on pizza. You use ranch.

So, a kid died in the middle of the rink back in the 80's because he a had a seizure from the strobe lights and speed skaters ran him over. They didn't see him and stop to help him up or call an ambulance? What the hell?

The phone rings. Answer it. The phone rings. It's a crank call. The phone rings. It's Rachel's boyfriend. The phone rings and is anything ever going to happen in this fucking movie?

None of you girls are hot. None of you.

Zits and zombies, Death Rink just outright sucks. The majority of the film is the phone ringing and someone that works there answers it with some guy screaming "Satan" on the other end because he feels like it I guess. That plot point pretty much goes nowhere as does basically everything else in this flick. There's nothing here that prompts me to want to delve deeper into the characters populating this microcosm of a world because there's nothing here but a douche-bag named Daley that wants to bang every girl he works with (which I don't know why you would) and is so desperate to smoke something. Anything. French is named French because he dips popcorn in mustard and puts mustard on pizza so French makes sense (runs fingers very hard down the front of my face and slowly lets the word "why" out of my mouth at this moment) as well as Wendy, Cara, Alicia and Rachel who are the main ladies that are just here to be here. As cannon fodder. Well, besides one-but I still won't spoil it in case you want to waste your time with this biohazard trash can stuffed beyond the brim with pathetically radioactive tree stumps. I'm trying to say that Death Rink isn't worth the 74 minutes it takes to skate a round with. Lace those wheels up with something else.