Both a traditional horror movie and a parody of the genre, Club Dread is one confused – and confusing – film. Conceived by the Broken Lizard comedy troupe responsible for Super Troopers, the film involves an island resort run by a drunken Jimmy Buffet-style singer/songwriter named Coconut Pete (a charmingly lackadaisical Bill Paxton) whose hot-to-trot employees come under attack from a serial killer. Tongue-in-cheek T&A freely mixes with sex and scatological humor in director Jay Chandrasekhar’s mildly enjoyable tropical concoction, but because it isn’t all that funny – and given that it exerts a surprising amount of energy trying to create genuine tension and scares – it’s hard to pinpoint what tone the filmmakers were after. Still, even if it doesn’t really succeed as a thriller or a comedy, the film isn’t simply a hack-job either, as evidenced by an inspired gag in which Chandrasekhar’s tennis instructor gamely peppers the encroaching murderer with tennis balls, as well as its boozy piece de resistance: a life-size, participatory version of Pac-Man in which one person plays as the chomping yellow protagonist, scantily clad bikini babes serve as ghosts, resort staffers don food costumes, and alcoholic beverages function as power pills.
