Seance

After a rather promising beginning, if you don't count the cliché "boarding school has his bunch of bullies and one stands up against it", the plot is getting more boring towards the end. I can't say I'm really thrilled about Sceance after watching it. It's all been done before and much better to be honest. The acting was decent, nothing more, but the story felt short. The horror scenes are very mild, not worth mentioning. It's all low budget, just like the quality.

Not bad for a slasher but the ending was kind of meh or typical. As a film set on a boarding school for girls, it looked severely understaffed, using very limited location & small set of characters. I think it mostly for their budgetary limitations but it looked quite odd at times.

A prank at the all-girls boarding school Fairfield Academy leads to the death of a student named Kerrie. The prank seems to have brought out a real supernatural spirit. The death is assumed to be a suicide. New student Camille Meadows (Suki Waterhouse) arrives to take over Kerrie's room. She gets into a fight with the clic of girls involved with the prank and they all get detention. While in detention, they decide to perform a seance to contact Kerrie.

It's all very average and middling starting with lead actress Suki Waterhouse. The story, the location, and the filmmaking are all middling. It's not actually scary although it's a little spooky. The twist is not shocking as much as it's a relief that it makes sense. The mystery is the same. I'm just glad that it's not completely stupid but the reveal is a long information dump.

No, just no! I'm sorry but as youthful as Suki Waterhouse looks, at almost 30 years of age (she'll be 30 on Jan 5), she is NOT a credible teenager. Come on! We forgave 'Grease' for casting 30 year old's as teenagers, and that was decades ago, surely the cast directors/producers could have cast someone in their late teens or early 20's, there's so many talented English actors that would have been so much better suited for this role!!!

Begin with an elite all-girls academy. There is a clique of cool girls. There is a bee-ach ring leader, a nerd or two, a token black chick. A token Asian chick. Seance...call forth something evil. Pretty young girls die taking showers and walking home down darkened paths one by one. OK. That sounds familiar.

First girl that dies is suddenly replaced by an outsider....who of course is there for a purpose. OK. That sounds familiar.

Next Step...is there a Ghost, or is this a deranged serial killer slashing hot young school girls?

Throw in the brooding young hot guy caretaker who befriends the girl, and an tough as nails old School Principal to keep everyone in line, as she tries to protect her Academy from the scandal of each seemingly disconnected accidental death.

You as a horror viewer should be pretty comfortable with all this. What goes wrong?

Really dumb arbitrary things. Immediately at the point where the diminishing cadre of young murder victims decides together that yes...indeed...there is actually a ghost doing this, the ring-leaders buddy says..."No you guys all go on, I'm going to the empty dance room to practice dancing alone in the dark for a while". I mean...seriously?

And ultimately that is what happens to this story. The School Principal just disappears and has nothing to do with anything at the end. The explanation for the killings just seems contrived and somewhat random. Oh...that's why. For unexplained reasons the main character seems to be armed and trained...except she keeps getting her butt kicked. Then...ya...she was 'a close friend' of the dead girl growing up...so that is how she stole an identity that gained her entrance to an exclusive school that somehow was magically financed because she was some kind of butt-kicking person for some reason. And....well...there was a ghost...I guess it was the ghost of her friend...not the first ghost after all.... and then she turns out to be gay and lets her newest friend know that she will come back to her, so the best concept of the movie, two superhot model looking chicks being gay with each other never happens....which shows us a bigger problem, the point of a teenage girls getting slashed movie is to titillate us with sexual innuendo that is juxtaposed as the killer's motivation for revenging all that hormonal sin of these young girls.

I can't argue with the idea that the cast is all a little too adult for their roles, but that didn't bother me as much as the two good guys....are played by two girls that are bean-pole models. They can't act and they seem like bored 30 year-olds hoping to break into movies.

Confused story, weak acting and cast, direction fine. At the lower end of this genre.