‘They never found his body, but they say his spirit lives in the forest…’
I wrote in my recent review of The Prowler about how 1981 was a landmark year for slasher films and The Burning is yet another horror classic that dropped in that year (along with Friday the 13th Part 2, Halloween II, and My Bloody Valentine) and it is probably the nastiest of the lot…
We open with the accidental death of a camp caretaker following a prank gone wrong. Five years later, the caretaker (named Cropsy after a popular American urban legend) returns to a nearby camp and kills off campers with a huge pair of garden shears. Brian Backer as Alfred is probably the closest thing we get to a protagonist while there are also early supporting roles for Fisher Stevens and Jason Alexander (the latter of whom is already showing signs of turning into George Costanza despite his tender years).
While The Burning feels very similar to Friday the 13th in terms of plot, and there are undeniable similarities, the tone of the film is very different. Whilst Mrs Vorhees mostly stalked her victims under the cover of darkness, The Burning often takes place in broad daylight which only serves to make the gnarly death sequences even more brutally effective. This is mostly down to Tom Savini’s incredible special effects. The deaths here are violent and visceral and director Tony Maylam (who also co-wrote the film along with the Weinstein brothers – the less said about that the better) chooses to linger on the more explicit moments rather than cutting away.
The Burning suffers from a lack of original characters and a generic plot but it succeeds in creating a slasher film that is genuinely dark and unsettling in places and Savini’s death sequences are worth the admission price alone.
