Purely Joyful Movie!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

An awesome, must-see documentary! If you are a slasher buff, gore buff, or 80s horror buff you need to watch this. The film chronicles the essential rise and eventual fall of the slasher genre. It also touches on the rebirth of the genre in the mid-90s. All the great ones are included. Friday the 13th, Nightmare on elm street, Halloween, etc. Along with some underrated, smaller gems like Maniac, Proweler, and the Burning. The doc also shows rare footage, behind the scene clips, and also helps open your eyes to a couple of titles you might not have heard of. COntains all the gore and blood you want to see from all your favorites. I really enjoyed. Only problem...no mention at all of Black Christmas! I've seen it about a 5 times since it's release....always entertaining.

'Going to Pieces' is a good and quite complete review of the history of the slasher movie genre. It succeeds to show quite well the origins of the genre in the American horror movies, and then provides quite an extensive review of the development and pick of popularity it reached in the 80s, its decline and its renaissance in the late 90s. Bringing to screen interviews with many of the major creators of some of the more popular films, fans, as well as critics of the genre makes the viewing interesting.Yet I could not escape the feeling that the authors focused to much on making an entertaining film rather than making a more serious analysis and examining more extensively the context of the slasher movies in the evolution of cinema. The almost exclusive American focus is one flaw, only the influence of the Italian movies of the 70s is mentioned, but what about the classical German films, or what about the contemporary Far East movies? Today the genre is more popular in Japan and Korea than any other place on the planet and some major movies came out from there in the last few years. Connections with related genres like zombies movies and even horror science fiction could have been more explored as well. As it stands 'Going to Pieces' risks to become one of the objects of interest in the genre it deals with, a film targeting mainly the same captive audience who watches these movies anyway.

The positive things about "Going To Pieces" are that it tries hard to include as many Slasher flicks as possible and deliver pieces of trivia for each of them. There are interviews with some influential directors of the genre (John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Sean Cunningham,...), actors, make-up guru Tom Savini and some "horror-experts".For starters, this movie is a good introduction to the genre. Real fans will not find a lot of new information here. We all know about the influence of "Halloween", we've heard the story of how Freddy Krueger has been created, we know how Wes Craven revived the genre with "Scream". Sure, it's unfair to criticize that all this is being told again in a documentary like this. After all the story wouldn't be complete without this information, but in the end one can't learn too much from "Going To Pieces".It would have been a real treat to learn the history of gore in movies, to learn about the influences for American slasher in detail. Instead we are only told about Italian horror in what seems like 2 minutes and then there's no further mention of it. "Halloween" is made out to be the first slasher movie, when even "Black Christmas" came before it in America. "Friday The 13th" is given more credit than it really deserves as an original movie. Make no mistake, I'm not trying to imply that those movies aren't very important to the genre, but it would have been a fresh approach to take a closer look at their origins.Another thing to consider is that before "Going To Pieces" you should either make sure that you know all of the movies mentioned in the documentary or accept the fact that some great twist endings will be spoiled for you, some of which are the only reason to watch these flicks in the first place ("Sleepaway Camp", "Happy Birthday To Me").In the end "Going To Pieces" will get you excited about watching old slasher flicks again (probably until you rent something like "Pieces" and realize the film is not half as exciting as it's made out to be in hindsight), but there are books out there that are a lot more informative than this documentary.

OK, I liked this documentary a lot. It had great information, great interviews with the actors and creators, and all of that.All in all, it was very entertaining, informative, well researched, etc.So, you may ask why say that I have a "spoiler" in such a film, or how is it possible.Well, here it is: They left out one very important Series of movies (or they covered it so fast that I didn't even see it in 2 viewings).What did they leave out, you ask. Candyman, Candyman, Candyman.Those movies certainly deserved a little credit. Also, no mention was made about how Science Fition spliced itself together with slasher films in movies like Shocker and The Hidden. Aren't they slasher films? Anyway, they couldn't include every movie ever made, of course, but no Candyman? How is it possible? Other than that, I thought this documentary was excellent.Desert-Buddha