This is a very dull movie. Right off the bat we get misled with its poster art which is punching way above its weight and is far from being an adequate representation of the movie you're about to watch. The movie itself is barely horror, if I had to call it anything, it would be a crime thriller/drama. Everything about the movie is just bland. There's repetitive questioning of people which often leads to no advancement with its plot, the characters are boring as fuck and it's extremely low on thrills outside of a brief chase in the final few minutes.

Cardiac Arrest is a huge disappointment, which is a shame because the plot itself has promise. Don't be fooled by the artwork, this is some midday movie shit that would have you yearning to watch a whole season of Matlock instead.

What could have been a promising early slasher of the 1980's was ultimately little more than a rather dull crime/drama flick with elements of horror sprinkled in far too sparingly.

Cardiac Arrest, what with it's feel, had the sensibilities of a 70's flick, and while I don't have an issue with 70's crime flicks (The Laughing Policeman and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three are both films I enjoyed), I can't say that much of this wasn't utterly dry. I liked the main detectives well enough, but that wasn't enough to keep the story interesting.

As it was Garry Goodrow and Michael Paul Chan did fine as the two main detectives, and I sort of liked the way they worked together, but Cardiac Arrest was 80% crime, 15% drama, and 5% horror, and that might be generous. I found the story, for a crime movie, decent, but it was very far from engaging.

Unfortunately, the poster for the film foreshadows a lot more promise than what the film is ever able to deliver, because save one or two scenes, this barely counts as a horror film. It hurts more because this is one that I've been interesting in seeing for at least six years - truth be told, past a certain point, I wasn't expecting much, but I was still somewhat disappointed.

The really sad thing is that, if this wasn't put out there as a horror film, it would have probably made a decent television pilot, like The Streets of San Francisco's hour-and-a-half pilot that dealt with Satanism. But as a movie that's marketed toward horror fans, Cardiac Arrest was just way too dull and meandering.