Stag Night

2008

This movie starts as you would expect: with the love interest from Hocus Pocus and the lovable stoner from Clueless attacking each other. Or perhaps you didn’t expect that. I’m sure 90’s movies fan fiction is very broad. Just kidding. This movie really starts after the credits (which should be seen) with a groom, his brother, and two friends celebrating his bachelor party at a strip club. Even though it is 3:30am in NYC, the groom’s brother (Breckin Meyer) suggests they head to another club he knows about. First of all, if anyone suggests a “cool club” at 3:30am, it’s not a cool club. It’s either a date rape club or an ironic hipster club. Both are too shameful and illegal to be seen at.

Obviously everyone has had too much to drink, so they follow whatever suggestions sounds best. They also follow a stripper from the club and her “nerdy” friend into the subway. Unfortunately, the “nerdy” friend (girl from Hocus Pocus, Vinessa Shaw), doesn’t like the Breckin Meyer’s hands or him throwing Jägermeister at her. So she maces him, and subsequently everyone else. The subway stops to let another train pass and the group in all their blindness open the door and stumbles out to an abandoned platform. It’s still strange to grasp that Manhattan would have abandoned ANYTHING since gentrification has swept over the city like a plague, but I suppose it is a movie and some liberties must be taken.

Now the group of four drunk bachelors and two half-sober ladies is smart enough to realize that no one, or at least no subway, is going to be back anytime soon, so they decide to hike down the tunnel to the next stop. Well, one couple decides to stay behind to have sex on the abandoned platform. So gross, but at least it is 70’s era Hepatitis they could catch. That could be treated with penicillin.

The group that traverses through the tunnels comes across a trio of what they think are “thugs” robbing a vending machine. Then they see the machetes, the dreaded hair, and poor dental hygiene. Then the brutal sword-murder of a cop. Obviously these are not the gangs from The Warriors they were warned about. So they book it. Unfortunately, these cannibals/thugs/feral people know the subway system better than your average transient so the group has no chance.

The couple that stayed back to “mack it” or whatever slang they were using in 2008 (I’m losing track with this cross generational movie experiment) are killed pretty quickly and gruesomely. The group sees this when they inadvertently happen upon the feral folks’ camp. As they watch their friends lose their heads and then their arms fed to the guard dogs, they realize they are dealing with your more than average psychopaths. This aren’t just criminals, these people were left over from the first Second Avenue subway. They have no intention of letting anyone who sees them see the surface again. Worse than the “mole people,” these guys are gonna murder you, then eat your neck fat because it probably tastes delicious, then wear your pancreas as a broach.

After a lot of running and machete swiping, basically everyone dies: feral folks and privileged white folks alike. I know horror movies are supposed to have a moral message, but I can’t really tell what this one is. Stay on the train? Don’t go to bachelor parties? Don’t throw Jägermeister at women? Whatever it is, I can’t stop looking at Kip Pardue and thinking it looks like Daniel Tosh and this is just all a sketch in front of a green screen. Sorry, Kip, I know you’re trying to have a successful and respected career, but you did name yourself, “Kip.” You have no hope. Just like people who get off trains at abandoned stops.