Don’t Panic (1988)
Article 5800 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-1-2020
Directed by Ruben Galindo Jr.
Featuring Jon Michael Bischof, Gabriela Hassel, Helena Rojo
Country: Mexico
What it is: Mexican slasher

A group of friends buy a teenager a Ouija board on his birthday and try to use it. Afterwards, the man who had the birthday begins having visions of his friends being killed, but his attempts to save them just make him a suspect.

Given my past experience with earlier Mexican movies, I was hoping that this late eighties entry might have some of those weird little touches that make them more interesting than they would otherwise be. There are a couple; there’s a slight touch of giallo here, and I liked that some of the messages received by the hero are through the TV set. Still, at heart, it’s really just a slightly cheesier version of a slasher movie, albeit one that forgoes some of the more pervasive cliches of the form. It’s not truly awful, but it really isn’t particularly special either.