Most critics didn't like Jerome Sable's Stage Fright. But here's the thing they missed: it wasn't really just a musical, a slasher film, or even a combination of both. In my opinion, the film works as an intense exaggeration of backstage life in amateur stage productions. Speaking as a former high school thespian, much of the suspicious shenanigans that went on in this film--directors giving out parts to themselves or their friends, weird sexual favors, extreme narcissism and backstabbing--are authentic. I feel like the killer was an embodiment of these anxieties coalesced into a perfect exaggerated whole. But besides that, the music is surprisingly catchy, the acting is great, and the featured singers can actually sing! I don't see Stage Fright as a love letter to slashers, I see it as a hate-love letter to the theater.
7/10
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