Picking Nits
Cell phone reception; thin evidence clearing the boyfriend; the speed of the opening disemboweling; Drew Barrymore's character not calling the cops; the cameraman on the roof; the voice disguiser and cloned phone; waiting a year to kill again; a party a week after the murders; the parents splitting up; where to stab each other; Billy seemingly trying to kill his partner; explaining the corn syrup
In the discussion (14)
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- The cell phone reception problem is restated, and more evidence than one call was wanted before Sidney stops suspecting her boyfriend, who turns up randomly while the other killer is chasing her.
- Wonders how the boyfriend was disemboweled so quickly in the opening, when the killer is barely seen. — K. Austin Collins
- The disemboweling looks less like a slit across the gut than a velociraptor clawing at him, a little fast for the work involved.
- Two nits: Drew Barrymore's character agreeing not to call the cops, and Matthew Lillard's character killing the 240-pound cameraman and getting him onto the roof before Gail drives off, which is not believable. — Shea Serrano
- The reply is that Skeet's character was still upstairs and must have been involved, since he walks down the stairs when she runs back inside, or that Lillard had taken eight bath salts for superhuman strength.
- How the voice disguiser works and how high school kids got it is questioned; the voice belongs to a separately cast actor, originally a placeholder they liked enough to keep, and cloning the cell phone seems beyond a seventeen-year-old without time at Radio Shack, though they did have a whole year.
- Whether killers could lay off for a year is doubted; once the line is crossed you might as well start killing everybody, and Skeet's character is as petty as the hosts for waiting a year to insult Sidney's mother; the Green River Killer is noted to have laid off for ten years.
- A parent's nit: a week after the first murders, with the killer not found, everybody goes to a huge party; the rationale offered is that wine-country parents are drunk at a tasting and the killer only kills high school kids.
- Walking in on their daughter hanging from a tree with the house on fire is about as tough a way to see a child go as there is; a small nit is the husband sending his wife outside alone to drive to the police, splitting up and breaking a core horror rule, though a movie about the parents would be watched.
- Asked, as the resident prison-movie expert, where to be stabbed to look left for dead: avoid the nipples area, where the important stuff is, and take it lower, preferably on the side. — Shea Serrano
- Alternatives are debated: the kidney is not the target because the wound must look serious, an arm or hand stab would not look like being left for dead, and the movie's killers aim for the sides.
- A theory that Billy is actually trying to kill Matthew Lillard's character, stabbing him four or five times off camera, is called great and unspoken; it fits Lillard being there for peer pressure while Billy is the sociopath, and the phone to the head is the one moment that made a host wince.
- Final stabbing preferences: a high left shoulder and a grazed neck for blood, though nobody trusts Skeet Ulrich near their neck, the legs are too minor to look near death, and the whole plan should have been nixed in favour of hiding in a closet.
- How Billy Loomis would explain being covered in corn syrup to the police is asked; a good cop would notice it is not blood, but Dewey, whose brain damage is established, can barely find the doorknob.