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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

As Gabriel Black's and Lance Ong's atmospheric synth pads growl over the opening credits, expectations are pretty high. Unfortunately this 1984 slasher is bungled in conception and execution. Kelly (Daphne Zuniga) is haunted by a vision – possibly a memory – of her father attacking his wife's lover and setting him on fire. Or is it the other way around? Along with her sorority sisters, Kelly is in the midst of an initiation, and now it's "Hell Week". The big plan is to break into a shopping mall and steal the uniform of the security guard – the "Fright Night" toward which the story progresses. Along the way we are introduced, via the standard POV shot, to a fork-wielding killer, who's working his way through the kids, apparently to get to Kelly. Could it be the burnt man from her vision? (Spoiler: Yes, yes it could.)Kelly goes to Peter (James Read), a psychology graduate with a penchant for blandly name-dropping Freud and Jung, and who's the kind of bore who goes to a college party and grumbles, "I, too, arrested my development for four years." She falls for him and he helps to unlock her madness. It is psychology as detective work, and this whole subplot drags an already quite ordinary film down in the most clunky and unconvincing way. As Kelly, it's an early role for Zuniga (she was Princess Vespa in Spaceballs, remember?), and her wit and charisma carries the film while its other elements fail her. The Initiation simply isn't very well made. It's not the budget, or the workmanlike makeup effects, or the clearly moving corpses. It's not the typically leering camera-work, or the bland and sometimes unfocused framing. It's the lack of interesting ideas. And any deviations from the slasher formula – i.e. the aforementioned pseudo psychology – feel like dull digressions rather than adding depth. Tonally it's all over the shop, with the tension too frequently punctuated by sub-Animal House frat pratting (all the boys are mindless jesters, by the way). At one point a dramatic crescendo is completely undone when one of the characters looks at the camera for a winking reaction. Sound like fun? Not when the film had shown zero signs of wilfully breaking the fourth wall up to that point. The story culminates in an extended setpiece inside a deserted shopping mall, where there are at least some flashes of inspiration. There's some okay tension here – I like the scene where one character enters a lighting shop, and the lamps begin illuminating around her – but almost always the pay-off doesn't warrant the build-up. And that goes for the film in general, as it careens toward its lame twist: a revelation requiring so much exposition that it's more tiring than clever. The Initiation doesn't excite as a slasher; doesn't titillate as an exploitation flick; and it definitely doesn't convince as a psychological horror. As a midnight movie, sadly, the only thing to fear is falling asleep.

Because of the tremendous success of John Carpenter's Halloween, it initially paved way for other film makers to try their hand at that genre. The appeal of a psychopaths motive to slaughter teens through effective POV shots to the powerful instruments that are capable of executing in a garishly grand manner was further explored, simply showing it at a larger scale for us to witness on screen. That's when Friday the 13th came in, which was made to have a good time in and had its fare share of jolts and joy. Suddenly, a entire line of films of this genre type came on aboard, each learning of F13th's impact on audiences were the gore values that were shocking and nothing like any one had ever seen before. The Initiation is one of those that got lost in the 80's slasher boom, with many others enjoying the cult appeal and therefore becoming recognisable in the horror market. For a movie that's very rarely heard of, it on most levels is superior and smarter and due to its scarcity, is what I call a rare example that demonstrates to make an effective and appealing slasher film. First off, it has a complex plot. Combining more than one is an effective way of misdirecting the audience into trying to find out who is mad killer. Plus we also get to spend a considerable amount of time and care for the characters in here before they meet their demise.We are introduced to Kelly, a college student and new-found member of a female sorority, who is suffering from recurring dreams of herself much younger, attempting to brutally attack her father only for a mysterious man to walk in and eventually to be lit on fire. In the mean time, a gardener working outside an institute sports severely burnt scars across his face, and is giving a menacing stare to a nurse, while fixating on an off-screen patient staring down at him. However, one night a mysterious person lets the patients loose, leading to the death of the nurse and sets out to stalk Kelly, the repressed teenager and her friends. Kelly, seeks professional psychiatric consultations where she is under the watch of psychoanalysis lecturer and a performing practice is ensured to form a piece of a puzzle that's been haunting Kelly for years, the burnt man. As the killer closes in on those closest to Kelly, we start to wonder who it might be that's trying to kill her friends. How is it that the killer by any chance may be linked to Kelly? Is it the burnt man, seeking revenge on her family, who may be responsible for his severe scarring, a loose mental patient or is it Kelly herself, who may be suffering from dual-personalities. The situation further increases when Kelly and her friends spend the night snooping around her Dad's shopping mall and the killer, whoever it may be, has caught up with and already set up a trap by isolating them and preventing any chance of escape.Of all the slasher films I watched, I find this to be one of the better ones and it was only by luck that I managed to find this through watching various segments of different slasher films discussed in a documentary. I watched a lot of slasher films but never had it been set in a large apartment or shopping mall and I thought they would make a really cool environment for a killer to stalk his or her victims. It would be a perfect place to set a moody and tense claustrophobic atmosphere, with its wide spaces, vast amount of floors, the confusion of a maze-like construction at night. And that's what we have with 'The Initiation'. Plus, the psychological experiment on Kelly was thrown in for good measure, trying to piece together the logistics of her nightmares. The pacing was exceptional, balancing the sub plots that will eventually form into one main plot.The kills were handled well and were shot with such frenetic energy. The death scenes and POV shots were filmed in usually odd angels, usually tilting, rocking side to side in a bizarre way, that I felt perfectly captured the psychological aspect of this movie, plus also creating a curiously supernatural atmospheric feel.I enjoyed this film a lot and it being more intelligent than some of the stalk and slash cycle in the 80's, I found it to be a very fun movie. Granted there are moments of cheesiness and guilty pleasure goofiness (?), but Daphne Zuniga and supporting cast deliver and are very likable plus the razor-sharp kills, uniquely frenetic camera angles and a great deal of complex who-dunit thriller, makes 'The Initiation' a cult film that deserves more recognition in the broader market. This a great film that kept me guessing to the very end and sits as a personal favourite of mine of the slasher films. I rate this an enjoyable 8 out of 10!

While trying to understand a frightening reoccurring nightmare, a pledge (Daphne Zuniga) is coaxed into breaking into her father (Clu Gulager)'s department store by her sorority sisters, where a deranged killer targets the girls and their boyfriends.This film's genesis seems pretty standard. Fresh out of school, Charles Pratt (who has gone on to make a name for himself in soap operas) pitched a script to New World. They accepted it, and brought on actress Daphne Zuniga, who had recently had a smaller part in "Dorm That Dripped Blood". Peter Crane started as director, but was apparently replaced by Larry Stewart when the film could not stay on its brisk schedule. Because the movie was shot in order, this creates a bit of a style shift after the first 20 minutes or so (in my opinion, a shift towards the better).By slasher standards, this one is pretty decent, though nothing special. The actual slashing does not even start until the third act, and none of the deaths are terribly inventive. The slow buildup does offer plenty of time to build up the characters and the mystery around some of them. There is also plenty of subplot concerning Kelly's nightmares and her forgotten childhood. Even without the slasher elements, it makes for a good horror mystery film. We know early on that her dreams are more than dreams, but they may not mean exactly what we expect.Horror icon Clu Gulager does not get enough screen time, and Vera Miles (easily the biggest star attached) is not used to her fullest. It is a shame, as she deserves better. On the bright side, the movie really lets Zuniga shine, and she appears in almost every scene. From here, everything was coming up in her favor, from "The Sure Thing" (alongside John Cusack) to Mel Brooks' "Spaceballs" (where children of the 80s probably remember her best). The Blu-ray from Arrow Video features an upgrade on the sound and picture, though given the original source, it is not mind-blowing. We also get a brand new audio commentary by the Hysteria Continues (a slasher-themed podcast), and new interviews with actors Christopher Bradley (who went on to "Waxwork" among many others) and Joy Jones (who has Heidi, the sleep study assistant, as her only credit). Screenwriter Charles Pratt has an interview that lasts over 20 minutes, telling tales of his scribbling. There is an extended scene, but amounts to little more than 3 or 4 seconds from a party and adds nothing to the plot. It could have been added back in and no one would have noticed.

An undemanding 80's slasher, The Initiation features plenty of mediocre acting, clumsy and unintentionally hilarious violence, and gratuitous, pulchritudinous shower nudity. Despite several red-herrings tossed in, and a lame twist at the end, the mystery central to the plot is not terribly cryptic, with the story arc telegraphed within the first 30 minutes or so. Daphne Zuniga's range blossoms from horrible to passable, while Deborah Morehart shows as almost as much verisimilitude as nipple. Through extremely limited screen time, Clu Gulager and Vera Miles give this movie undeserved credibility. Never straying from the patented formula for blood-drenched success, The Initiation would definitely be at home as a DVD wedged under an unbalanced table leg, if not stuffed into a slasher-completist's collection of Greek organization serial killer movies.