In a classic case of survival of the fittest (or at least the most shameless), the self-referential slasher movie has survived saturation, over-exposure, and the law of diminishing returns by becoming even more self-reflexive. No longer content to draw inspiration and a frame of reference from slasher movies, the genre's second wave takes place largely on movie sets, allowing them to exploit the clichés of both the film-world comedy and the slasher movie. Following in the exploitative tradition of Scream 3, Urban Legends: Final Cut, and Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Cut combines cinephilia with gore as it follows a group of modern-day Australian film students finishing an '80s slasher movie whose production was cut short by the murder of its director. What follows is less like art imitating life than schlock imitating slightly better schlock, as the students contend with runaway egos, personality conflicts, and an extremely busy masked killer. Sub-sitcom-level wisecracks alternate with lazily orchestrated bloodshed as the killer works his way through cast and crew, but Cut never works, either as a slasher movie or as a film-savvy behind-the-scenes comedy. Casting teen-movie icon Molly Ringwald as a temperamental American star was an inspired move, but that's where the inspiration ends. As in Final Cut and Scream 3, groan-inducing pop-culture references abound (Mad Max, Boogie Nights, E!, the Sundance Film Festival), but suspense and originality are in short supply. "Don't waste your time making trash!" counsels the student's horror-hating film professor early on. That advice could have prevented Cut's existence, and the world would be a better place for it.