Aquaslash is a 2019 Canadian horror comedy written and directed by Renaud Gauthier. The film was shot in Canada
The graduating class of Valley Hills Highschool celebrates the end of the school year with an all-weekend 80s-themed party at Wet Valley Water Park. Josh and his band, "The Blades" are set to perform the night before the big water slide competition. What they don't know is a mysterious killer is offing people and plans to turn the competition into a literal bloodbath. Meanwhile, the park's owner, Paul, is planning to sell the park to Josh's father, unaware that he's having an affair with his wife, Priscilla, who he in turn is cheating on with a teenage. Josh is caught up in his own love triangle when he reconnects with his old flame Kim, enraging her current boyfriend Tommy.
All of this infidelity, drama and business intrigue is really just a set up for the gruesome death scenes, though. So no worries if you're not following.
Aquaslash provides examples of:
- Accidental Misnaming: Chad is constantly referred to by just about any other name that starts with C.
- An Arm and a Leg: These go flying down the water slides!
- Artistic License – Physics: It's rather unlikely that the momentum of a person going down a water slide would create enough pressure to chop a person apart, even with multiple people crashing into them from behind. It would certainly cause fatal injury, but the blades likely couldn't get through the bones, at least not without damage.
- Asshole Victim: In true corny slasher movie fashion, many of the people who die are all awful people in some way. Cheaters, abusers, drug users, or just really bad listeners.
- Tommy is a standout example because his girlfriend Kim cheats on him with Josh, but it's hard to feel bad for him since he's chauvinistic, abusive and possessive and to top it all off, it's implied Kim was cheating on *Josh* with him in the first place. Later averted in the final act of the film, he's the first one who realizes something is wrong with the waterslide and desperately tries to save people and for his troubles, he's thrown down the slide and killed brutally.
- Averted in the case of Phil. Despite spending every second of his screen time being as obnoxious as possible, sexually harassing women, pushing likely fake drugs, directly getting at least one person killed, and experiencing nothing in the way of a redemptive moment, he manages to escape the picture unscathed.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Priscilla goes out of her way to spare Kim, Josh and his band because she liked them. She even makes sure Josh gets the money from the park's closure.
- Booby Trap: A sabotaged water slide. The killer pretty much has one gimmick. Seems pretty effective, though.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: The film's leading couple, Josh and Kim, are pretty hedonistic, pick a few fights and cheat on her old boyfriend. Tommy is implied to be an abusive and controlling boyfriend, but all three of them try desperately to save people when the deaths start happening.
- Black Comedy: The movie, being a tribute to 80s slasher flicks, is intentionally corny and hokey at times. Other times, the humor comes from the absurd gore.
- Broken Tears: Priscilla is stuck-up and haughty for most of the movie, but when Josh is beat up at a party, she starts sobbing and screaming at the crowd for not helping him. It might have something to do with her father dying when she was young, and nobody helping him either.
- Blood Is Squicker in Water: Definitely invoked. Even squickier with floating chunks of flesh in it.
- Developing Doomed Characters: The movie opens with a murder, but takes nearly half an hour for the body count to start rising.
- Downer Ending: Priscilla, the murderer, gets away with it. The water park is bulldozed and replaced with a shopping mall. The park was sold to Josh's dad, but Priscilla murdered him in cold blood during her rampage. She was nice enough to make sure the money for selling the land went to Josh, but it hardly makes up for murdering his father and several of his schoolmates and traumatizing his girlfriend.
- Excuse Plot: Sure, they spice it as much as possible with romantic drama, cheating, backstabbing and business espionage, but at the end of the day everything only happens to get some dumb teenagers to go down a water slide and die horribly.
- Femme Fatale: The killer of the film is the park owner's hot wife, known around town for sleeping with a different teenage virgin every year.
- Freudian Excuse: Priscilla, the killer, saw her father die in a water slide accident (or murder?) and nobody helped him.
- Flashback: One at the end of the movie. We learn that Priscilla saw her father die at the exact same water park her husband later owned, and and it traumatized her so badly she wanted to inflict that same pain on other people.
- Gorn: The movie certainly delivers on the gore factor.
- Glorified Sperm Donor: A voicemail from Josh to his father implies his dad isn't around very often and doesn't take much of an interest in being there for him. He seems to be trying to make up for it, though he has ulterior motives for being at the park.
- Hate Sink: Nearly in the movie is vulgar, cheats on their partners, does drugs and only cares about themselves, save for a handful of likable protagonists. Then they start dying.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: The one big murder has several victims getting diced by the blades in the slides and coming out in chunks.
- Here We Go Again!: at the end of the film, we see a younger Priscilla emerge from the bloody pool water with a sinister look on her face. In a mid-credits scene, we see a child around her age emerge from the bloody water, implying that witnessing the grisly events of the film will make him grow up to kill people too.
- Homage: To 80s slasher movies, particularly the ones with elaborate traps.
- High-Pressure Blood: The poster gives you an idea of just how red the water gets.
- Ironic Name: The hero, Josh is the lead singer of a band named "The Blades."
- Karma Houdini: Priscilla succeeds in her revenge plot and doesn’t face justice for the murders she committed.
- Despite being a relentless jerk and (albeit unwittingly) pushing Tommy to his death, Phil goes down the non-trapped slide and is seen emerging unharmed.
- Killed Offscreen: The first of the cast to die takes a shot in the foot while the killer looms over him, and shows up as a corpse later.
- Noodle Incident: Apparently this isn't the first time someone murdered tons of people at the water park, though the exact details of how it happened or who did it are never explained.
- Out with a Bang: As an homage to 80s slashers, a couple is killed in the opening mid-coitus.
- Pet the Dog: Priscilla, the park owner's cheating wife, goes out of her way to help Josh after he gets attacked on stage, getting security to save him and firing the employee who attacked him on the spot. She's even driven to tears at how the crowd didn't do anything and laughed at his pain. she's the one who kills everybody.
- Really Gets Around: The wife of Paul, the park owner, is nicknamed "The End" by the local boys because every year at the big graduation celebration she takes a different boy's virginity. Paul himself is also sleeping around with younger girls, and really just about anybody in this movie with a working set of genitals makes liberal use of them.
- Red Herring: These are thrown out constantly. People are constantly making threats, making off-hand comments and have motivations that make it seem like they'd be the killers.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Priscilla committing the murders are all a part of a convoluted revenge plot against her husband for trying to sell the park and cut her out, the annoying teenage guests, and to shut down the water park where her father died.
- Signs of Disrepair: Notably averted. The film had the perfect setup to make a sign that said "Aqua Splash" and have the "P" fall off. Instead, the water park is named something completely different and the title is just gibberish.
- Redemption Equals Death: Tommy, the abusive boyfriend who stole Josh's girlfriend and beat him up when she went back to him, finds out the slide is booby-trapped and begs people, including Josh, not to go down. The dumb teenagers laugh at him and throw him down the same slide that kills them later.
- The Reveal: The wife of the park owner, Priscilla, is the one who sabotaged the water slide with cross blades, as well the murder of Josh's dad and the two life guards at the start of the movie.
- Teen Drama: The primary focus for roughly half the film.
- Token Wholesome: Graded on a curve, Josh and Kim. They're the only two teenagers who don't do drugs, beat people up or bully them. They're not completely innocent though, since Kim cheated on her current boyfriend to be with Josh and didn't even bother breaking up with him first, and Josh was totally unrepentant.
- Stock Scream: A Wilhelm scream can be heard in the first scene.
- Urban Legend: The razors in waterslides story sized up.
- Villain Opening Scene: A nod to the first Friday the 13th film, we get a first-person perspective shot of the unseen killer murdering a couple. Turns out, they were supposed to be the lifeguards but Priscilla killed them so she could take their spot and make sure her plan worked.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Josh gets called out by his best friend for sleeping with Tommy's girlfriend. Josh is pretty unapologetic, though. It's easy to see why since Tommy is a kind of a total dick.
