Night of the Reaper (2025) Movie Review

A Twisted (and twisty) Halloween Treat

Night of the Reaper begins with a typical slasher setup. It’s the 1980s somewhere in the United States. A babysitter named Emily (Summer H. Howell) tucks her young charges into bed and sits down to watch television. In the film’s eerie Scream-like ten minute opening sequence, she is stalked and eventually slaughtered by an assailant wearing a skull mask.

Then we’re introduced to the movie’s protagonist, Deena (Jessica Clement), a softspoken college student who has returned to her small town home for the Halloween weekend.

She reunites with her friend Haddie (Savannah Miller), who is supposed to babysit the local sheriff’s son, Max (Max Christensen), on Halloween night. After Haddie becomes ill, Deena reluctantly agrees to take the babysitting gig.

Meanwhile, the town’s police department receives a series of VHS tapes in the mail. They’re snuff films of the Reaper’s previous victims. The gruff sheriff, Rod (Ryan Robbins), becomes obsessed with apprehending the culprit at all costs.

The maniac sends the police on a scavenger hunt across town to find more tapes. Of course, the Reaper isn’t done yet. He’s planning to make a brand new snuff movie, and he wants Deena to be the star.

More Clever Than You Expect

This seems like a straightforward plot for an ’80s slasher homage, but director Brandon Christensen (Superhost) isn’t satisfied with simply retreading the same ground as countless other movies.

The first two thirds of his film effectively build up the dread and drop subtle hints of what’s to come. The final act pulls off a series of wild twists that subvert expectations in a different (and better) way than I was expecting, leading to a satisfyingly bloody conclusion.

Jessica Clement is the breakout star. Like the movie itself, Deena seems simple at first, but she is far more complex and multi-layered than she appears. Clement gives a natural performance. She avoids overacting or doing anything cartoonish. Deena feels like a real person and I was invested in her story.

Clement also has the perfect look for this part. She’s the classic girl next door. As far as I can tell, this is her first horror role. She has scream queen potential. I’d love to see her in more genre flicks.

There are a ton of modern horror movies set in the ’80s, but Night of the Reaper is one of the few that genuinely captures the look of that decade. The toned down, brown-hued cinematography captures the mood of an era when Halloween was much simpler, before it became the massive corporate and social media juggernaut that it is today.

Night of the Reaper also subverts expectations in terms of content. There are some brutal murders, but it’s not a huge gorefest like many slasher movies. There is also no sex or nudity whatsoever. This movie doesn’t need gratuitous violence or nudity, but if that’s what you’re looking for, look elsewhere.

The babysitter and the sheriff are quality characters, and the killer’s costume is cool, but Night of the Reaper doesn’t have much depth behind these main folks. The secondary characters are a bland, one dimensional group. This doesn’t affect the movie all that much, but a wider group of people to care about would have been nice.

This also isn’t for you if you’re looking for a movie filled with incisive social or political commentary. We’ve had some great films (and novels) like that this year, but this isn’t one of them. Nor does it need to be. Night of the Reaper is intended to simply be an entertaining Halloween horror film, and that’s exactly what it is.

Ultimately, this movie is about revenge. How far would you go to avenge a loved one’s demise? I have to be vague to not to spoil the ending, but revenge is the top motivator for most of the major characters. They’ll risk anything and everything to attain it. This is a theme that’s easy to understand, and it adds additional resonance to the film’s conclusion.