There comes a point when the well runs dry, when good ideas are just hard to come by and that is what Fatal Games felt like, at least at first. Whoever thought that a slasher that would feature a killer murdering people with a javelin would make for a captivating movie must have been drowning in coffee after a few late nights and yet, despite what most would think, it did not turn out all that bad.

It all takes place at the Falcon Academy of Athletics and it finds those that attend there doing what most tend to do when young – gossiping, thinking about sex, having sex, talking about girls, talking about boys and so forth. There is also much ado about the gymnastics team and how they are looking forward to competing on a much larger stage, perhaps the Olympics if they buckle down enough. As it is, there is one person who is looking to put the hurt on them in a most permanent fashion and they do so by killing them off with a javelin of all things, though it takes a while for the young hopefuls to realize they are being picked off one by one.

To be fair, while there is a lot of bad in this film, there is also some good to go along with it though the former might outweigh the latter. Viewing this, one will notice that it was obviously shot on a smaller budget than most and the actors and actresses employed are not what one might call A-list. Be that as it is, they were not as bad as some that have been seen throughout the history of moviedom and they managed to deliver the material as best they could even if it was a little flat. The story was nothing to write home about and it could have used a little more suspense throughout to keep that line of horror ever-present in the mind. One does have to wonder if a better script would have made all the difference here or if it was just a combination of everything that made the movie as poor as it ended up, one example being the lack of teachers and classes featured as it is a school but there are none shown whatsoever. Suffice it to say, that in the end, one will never truly know.

As for the good, the novelty of the javelin makes this slasher stand out among its peers. There have been some inventive kills over the years with all manner of tools and weapons but this is, whether inspired or lazy, quite fun. Not only is it fun but funny, unintentionally so of course as the film was never meant to be a comedy but when observing the masked figure running throughout the school with a six to eight foot in length javelin while trying to be sneaky and so forth is laughable at best.

Fatal Games or Olympic Nightmare or The Killing Touch as the movie is known, may not be for every viewer and there was a lot that could have been improved upon to make for a much more linear story and to simply make sense but it is entertaining and that is all that ultimately matters.

2.5 out of 5