Have you ever taken a final exam? Did you enjoy it? Did you spend hours preparing for it and then fully realize the ecstasy of fulfilling your planning and research in an orgiastic explosion of words and principles and thoughts and conclusions on paper? Did that happen to you? Were you finishing your calculations and felt the quivering pleasure of Euclidean satisfaction? Did you? Did you? Be honest here. That never happened to me at all and it certainly won’t happen during this movie unless you really like boring things where nothing happens ever.

And maybe you do and that’s good! I’ve worked on some boring ass shit in my careers and some of it was actually fun but not Final Exam, honestly. But maybe it would be for you! Maybe! But not me. I didn’t hate it but really nothing ever happened about anything at all and I kind of feel like everyone involved just kind of gave up by the end. But we are fair here at Eric Undead so let’s do some deep massaging and probing and see if we can find some good we can report back about this thing.

*spoilers*

One of our main characters is a guy named Radish and I’m not kidding. He is one of those people other people went around calling “nerds” back in the days like this. He’s got a squeaky voice and he’s not a jock and he carries all of his books around everywhere he goes and regularly talks about how brilliant he is. He is also forlorn because he can’t get the girl but keeps upbeat by doing inventory for the sports team after hours over in the locker rooms. It is not clear or even implied that the source of his satisfaction and pride is sniffing dirty jock straps or picking up steaming sweat socks but his name is Radish and he’s a nerd. Sadly we’ll never know what he really liked to sniff because after he has a run in with the killer at the gym and sprints as fast as he can across campus, the killer must have teleported through space because he’s there in the dorm to smash his hand through the door, grab poor Radish by the neck, kill him dead and leave his corpse dangling there in the actual door. But! Maybe he’ll be your favorite part! He’s brilliant and looking for love so he might be right up your alley and as we all know, no one is really ever truly dead in a movie, corpse dangling and all.

Here’s Radish while was alive:

If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, how about the feather haired fraternity dude who drives around in a fancy ‘vette drinking cans of pop top beer and calling everyone “Pledge!” “Pledge! Go steal some tests!” “Pledge go steal some pills!” He yells and barks, commanding the scene everywhere he goes. “Pledge! Go make me a bacon sandwich!” “Pledge! I’ve got an itchy heat rash in my crack, run this ridged strap up and down through it!” Do you like men who take charge? This may be what you’re looking for in Final Exam with the one sore spot being that, as he is being chased through parking lots and into a some sort of off limits area, he goes to hide in a locked room and somehow the killer is already inside of it and hiding in a round trash can. “Gotcha!” Screams the killer brandishing his knife, the filmmakers no longer even trying to hide his face / identity. Sadly we don’t see frat boy again until Radish cones across his carcass somehow stuffed in a locker some time later.

In happier days, here’s our ‘vette drivin’ guy ordering up some ‘ludes:

Speaking of the killer, who is this fucker anyway? This thing starts off with a bang with a dude trying to make it with his old lady in a convertible. Soon he’s ripped from his car by something strong and it’s kind of awesome then we just see a shadowy figure hanging around here and there for forty five minutes. Then they just give up and show his face and it’s just some dude with an old 70s haircut and I guess he’s mad for some reason and wants to kill some folks. Maybe I missed why but there you go and all right ok. I think he was wearing a jean jacket. I know we don’t really need a motive or back story or any dialogue or anything from the villain in one of these things but this guy’s just kind of going around and stuffing people in lockers and climbing very slowly up stairs and hanging out in the room with art covered by drop cloths and hiding in a trash can. Would some reasoning have made this any better? Probably not but hey ok all right shoulder shrugs.

OOH! Look at this GIF I ran across:

I would like to note, just for continuity’s sake, that the killer guy smashed his fist through the inside of that door and grabbed poor Radish and pulled him inward so at some point the killer switched up the crime scene and then stuck him back through the door head first the other way. Or I suppose, for argument’s sake that it’s possible he took the door off the hinges and reversed it and flipped it and changed out all of the hardware to make things look more scary but then again we have no idea why this gentleman is smashing through doors and doing the things he’s doing or even if he has handy DIY skills. My bet is that whoever was putting this thing together thought that this would make for a better shot and said “fuck continuity in the butt, let’s roll some tape!”

But we are fair here at eric undead and want to point out at least one good thing here too. At some point, after the frat boys (seriously) stage an on campus shooting and murder to steal some guys so they don’t have to take a final exam, other students are running around scared and calling the cops and this one female comes running up to our straight-up female leads to appraise them of the situation and she’s all “LOOK OHMIGOD THERE’S BEEN A SHOOTING AND PEOPLE ARE DEAD AND I THINK THEY TOOK (VETTE GUY) HOSTAGE OHMIGOD!” and the two other girls look at her and are all “hahah that’s just the (fraternity) pulling a prank, don’t you know?” and the camera cuts to her and she gives the weirdest possible looking smile of acceptance I feel like I’ve ever seen and I was rooting for her the rest of time. Sadly she only shows up one more time when she’s running around screaming (SOME GUY’S NAME) HAS BEEN TREED HE’S BEEN TREED OHMYGOD HE’S BEEN TREED AGAIN!!” but naturally her girls are all “oh it’s just the end of year pranks, you silly and his girlfriend will go let him down so she can get his pledge pin” and my friend is all “oh ok” and sits on the bed and destroys a perfectly nice looking and organized game of solitaire. At this point someone shouts her name out in frustration: “Elizabeth!” and then the editor cuts over to the room full of art (if I remember correctly) As for Elizabeth, I looked her up and doesn’t look she did much else so I hope she accomplished what she set out to do out there.

I had to work really hard to find that picture, fyi to anyone that reads this.

To recap: this movie started off nice but was then a really boring snooze-o-rama for the rest of it except Elizabeth who was in it for maybe ten seconds and this one part with this guy and his bow and arrow and that’s really about it for me. Unless you’re really interested in a youth tied to a tree with people shooting shaving cream all over him. That scene seemed to go on forever.

FILED UNDER: I GUESS THERE’S A REASON I’VE NEVER HEARD OF THIS AND SCREW CONINUITY IN THE BUTTHOLE