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In Paul Etheredge-Ouzts’ Hellbent (2004), a devil-masked, sickle-wielding killer is preying on young gay men in West Hollywood. His motivation, in a Black Christmas (1974)-esque twist, is unsatisfyingly never revealed in the movie; as we wonder inconclusively whether homophobia or vengefulness specific to the friend group he’s ostensibly targeting is driving him, we familiarize ourselves with his impressive, Michael Myers-descended talent for seeming omniscient and his knack for decapitating victims in one quick chop. (He keeps the heads as trophies.) 

Hellbent takes place across a few nights — primarily Halloween eve and the day of — and largely takes the perspective of a young, mostly-still-closeted police technician named Eddie (Dylan Fergus) who learns about this killer while at work. (Hellbent’s solid opening sees the murderer mince two guys going at it one night in a car ensconced in a park seemingly vacated for the evening.) When Eddie tells his friends about the case, they, as lame-brained slasher-movie characters are wont to do, think it would be funny to go to the scene of the crime and do some looking around themselves. There is, unsurprisingly, a run-in with the murderer. (One wonders if he goes to this same spot every night, hoping one or more gay guys show up.) But they get away free, though not before ticking him off with some name-calls and, because who doesn’t do this when a serial killer is standing a few yards away, group mooning. 

This audacious teasing apparently ignites a hunger for revenge in this killer. Because, on Halloween, when the costumed friends are stopping by the Halloween parties being thrown in various West Hollywood gay clubs, he can be depended on to be there, too, managing successfully to do his murdering in plain sight. Stupefied by drugs and drinks and strobe lights, most club attendees peripherally see this out-of-a-horror-movie violence and not unreasonably think “Halloween stunt.”

In Hellbent, often billed as the first gay slasher movie, the subgenre’s hardly subtle misogyny transmutes into garden-variety homophobia. Eddie becomes a “final gay” because he’s pretty good at passing as straight and, still not yet fully comfortable with his sexuality, doing the least hooking-up among his friends. (With their flamboyancy and unfettered randiness, they all become obvious targets.) Keeping the killer’s identity and motivation ambiguous is disappointing: no slasher movie feels quite complete without a long-winded, last-minute monologue from the bad guy explaining why they’ve been doing *all this*. But you can see why Etheredge-Ouzts went with it: it better makes this guy a shadowy stand-in for homophobia writ large.

Unstylish and formulaic, though still often funny, Hellbent is more generic a slasher than you might like it to be. When a film is groundbreaking, you want the outcome to have a similar kind of weight. But it’s still a good time for the slasher-inclined, and recently has at least gotten a deserved boost as a go-to “watch this instead” answer when someone wants to avoid the recent, and pretty much universally despised, LGBT-themed slasher They/Them (2022) and doesn’t know where to turn.