Thriller is a 2019 horror film about a childhood prank that comes back to haunt a clique of South Central Los Angeles teens when their victim returns home during their high-school Homecoming weekend.
There’s a lot about writer and director Dallas Jackson‘s Thriller that doesn’t quite find its balance, perhaps because it’s trapped in a genre and plot that doesn’t take full advantage of the potential it has in delivering the message it ultimately tries to deliver. The excellent cast is packed with good performances, all on point who greatly embrace the trope-ish roles they have been given and load the film with energy, even as the whole thing just sort of pours itself in to well-used mold that fails to offer anything of value.
Four years ago, while in elementary school, a big group of friends lure a fellow classmate named Chauncey, who is mentally challenged, into an abandoned house intending to prank him with scary masks. Things backfire though and their target pushes one of them over a railing, killing him instantly. The friends decide to blame Chauncey as a bully and the cops believe them, throwing the boy in juvenile detention. Four years later, he’s out, bigger, stronger, and angrier. As the older teens – entangled in their own set of problems – try to cope with life in high school, they soon come to believe Chauncey is coming back for revenge.
To be sure, the only innovate thing about Thriller is its cast and setting, the mostly black actors and South Central locale feeling fresh. However, all good things are tainted by a very generic plot recycling one overused cliche after another, which, let’s be honest, isn’t without precedent. It’s standard industry practice, the already thin deck drawn from over and over in this group of movies.
So, yes, there is a host of things on tap here that are part and parcel to the genre, and to list them would be pointless. If you’ve seen any average horror movie in your life, then you’ve seen what’s happening here. The larger problem though is how it takes what could have been a smart story and spin it into nonsense that doesn’t make much sense, beginning with the opening salvo that is rushed and without a single thread of believability. That sort of disconnected storytelling ends up souring much of the rest where nothing really feels grounded, especially with moments that include a top-selling hip hop artist getting involved with one of the under-aged girls.
Take away the entirely uninteresting main plot of Chauncey’s hollow revenge tactics and this could have been a significant movie about black teens struggling with living in the ‘hood’ as targets and predators of system that is built to suppress them. Every single part of the film that put its efforts on that instead of the lifeless stalking of a hooded figure we never get to bond with starts to click and you want more of it. Too bad the filmmakers couldn’t have seen that was where the real movie was and abandoned the weak horror and let these talented young actors do what they seem primed to do.