A man escapes from the psychiatric ward where he is incarcerated, killing a guard and stealing his uniform. A few years later a female teacher is killed at a local university. Are these two events related? Most probably given the director of this film put these two scenes together, though watching the movie is the only way to really get a definitive answer. Soon enough, a new teacher is needed to continue with the courses the previous one was teaching and so a new hire is brought on and said teacher also happens to be a woman. One immediately knows that she is going to be the final girl in this picture and as the movie progresses, bodies start to fall around her until finally, all is revealed and the director gives his audience a bit of a shock ending.

Directed by Richard W. Haines, Splatter University is a slasher that takes that singular road straight down the middle between good and bad, ending up as just okay. Haines provides his audience with a picture that plays out decent enough but it could have used a little punching up on multiple fronts to really make it pop and stand out from the pack. The story itself is good enough, most slashers do not need to go too deep into complicated scenarios or what have one. A simple story such as ‘there is a killer on the loose and may be at the university’ is fine and dandy. It is what the creators of a movie do with it that really makes the difference. The film did have a beginning, middle and end and there was a flow to it all that carried the audience along, but the script could have been a bit better as there were some clunky moments between characters and failed to strike a chord most of the time. One of two things could have made this all better and a little more palatable with either the running time cut down a bit or a few more kills being made so that it ran faster than it did. It was not boring per se but it needed something to move it along at a better pace.

As for the horror itself, the movie being a slasher, there were a few kills to be had and they were often a little disquieting, at least until Haines focused on the blood. Usually, a lot of blood is a good thing to have but this blood looked more than a little fake and so it took a bit of the air out of the sails so to speak. Still, the man did a decent job regarding these moments and it is a shame there were not more of them. Best of all out of this movie is the finale, that shock ending where final girl Julie as played by Forbes Riley is under the gun and Haines does the unthinkable. Some might not have liked how the man played this out but it definitely gave the film a talking point and it, more than absolutely everything else in the movie stayed on a person’s mind after it was done and finished.

What makes Splatter University bizarre is that despite all of its faults, it somehow captures the attention and makes one continue to ride the film out until its last minute. Whether it was Forbes’s good looks, the hostile students and strange professors that inhabited the university, or the mystery of just who the killer might be, there was enough here to warrant one’s time.

2.5 out of 5