Lantern’s Lane Review: Not even a flicker of light in this lackluster slasher.

While combing through the front page of my Hulu suggestions, I came across a new movie that the algorithm seems to be pushing pretty hard: Lantern’s Lane, released November 2021. At first glance, it seemed interesting: a new slasher film that’s not a remake? That’s right up my retro alley. Yet, I’d never heard of it before, and it had been out for months! More than that, it didn’t have a Wikipedia page… Ignoring the red flags, I sat down to watch. Whoops. Minor plot point spoilers ahead.

The film opens, and the lighting is immediately harsh to look at. The shadows are too dark, while anything under a light is washed out and bleak. This visual style can work, but here it looks more like the worst-lit horror blockbuster of 2003. Slasher movies should gravitate toward color; brilliant hues mixed with the inherent over-the-top violence of the genre makes for a surreal and interesting visual experience. This colorless, hospital lamp-esque lighting may be trying to come off as gritty and unsettling, but ends up just making the movie hard to look at.

More than that, the characters are unlikeable and shallow. Layla and Missy, two estranged friends and two of our main protagonists, are former mean girls. As they meet back up again for the first time since Layla left for college, it soon becomes clear that Missy at least has not changed. She very quickly brings up the time that they had ditched a former classmate on Lantern’s Lane, a rural area out of town and the location of an urban legend. This classmate then later committed suicide, and neither of them seem horribly broken up over it. While not every character in a slasher film needs to be a good person, and in fact many should not be, those who get the most screen time should at least have tolerable personalities. It might almost be fun to root for their downfalls, but their two-dimensional characters makes it hard to feel anything more than an irritating neutrality toward them.

The expositional scenes are just boring. The paper-thin plot line gets the group out to the mysterious Lantern’s Lane. They mention people and events we haven’t seen. Jason, our stock white guy, explains the urban legend that the movie’s title card (“Urban Legends are Everywhere… But Sometimes they’re REAL”) lazily alludes to, blah, blah, blah. I have a question for you, Dear Reader: If you watched this film, ask yourself this: do you remember what that legend was? No? That’s fine, because other than providing a reason for the cast to be out in the middle of nowhere, it has nothing to do with the story. This is a disappointment: a so-called urban legend has many a time been the driving force behind a classic slasher film. The Burning, Friday the 13th, and Urban Legends are some fantastic examples of this trope. Lantern’s Lane on the other hand tossed out a perfectly viable idea before it can even be fleshed out as part of the larger story. The result is an entire facet of the movie that feels tacked on and unnecessary.

The film has not one, but two false starts; though I actually found these to be entertaining parts of the story. When the killer does show up, though, they don’t come across as scary. Our victims are locked inside a house after all, with no real way for the killer to get in. There’s no danger. In fact, as multiple characters insist on running out of the safety of the house for a litany of reasons that can only be described as “stupid,” it feels as though the director is desperately trying to inject tension into the boring story. Instead, it comes across as frustrating. More than that, the killer is a blank clone: your basic psycho with a knife and a mask. There’s no gimmick here, no creativity. Unfortunately, that immediately renders this character as forgetful. As I’m writing this, I just finished the film and I can’t remember if the killer was supposed to be part of the urban legend or if they even explained the origin at all.

Rounding out the long list of complaints Lantern’s Lane manages to cultivate in its short 1.5 hour runtime is the editing. It’s a mess of jump cuts and shots that linger just a little too long. Pair this with hokey dialogue broken up by monotonous and some of the most boring killer sequences I’ve ever witnessed, and Lantern’s Lane quickly becomes difficult to watch. The climax of the film is predictable, but does showcase one of the few pieces of decent acting in the film. By then, however, it’s too late. As the film winds down, it tries to lower the curtain with a blatant “Easter egg” alluding to a certain horror classic. While it’s probably supposed to be a send-up, it feels more like a rip-off. Lantern’s Lane cannot be saved. Worse than bad, it’s mediocre, and not worth your time.