Study Hell

At its core, Study Hell takes an audacious approach to the high school detention trope, morphing it into a horror-slasher narrative. The film follows a group of students, closely resembling the archetypes from The Breakfast Club, who find themselves trapped with a war veteran teacher suffering from PTSD, leading him to snap and turn into a killer. This low-budget Canadian aims for tension but ultimately struggles to deliver on its promise, weighed down by budget limitations, unpolished execution, and inconsistent performances. Study Hell is so obscure it's practically impossible to find, with lost copies, deliberate destruction, or whatever it was.

If John Hughes had made The Breakfast Club into a horror film, then it might have been something like Study Hell -- only a lot better. This low budget Canadian slasher lifts the basic set up, and its high school characters, from Hughes's film, but with an untalented amateur cast and a far less accomplished director, Study Hell is fully deserving of its obscurity (this is only the second review here on IMDb).

The film sees a group of students -- a cool kid (Michael Henry), a rebel (Ryan Fisher), a beauty (Shaylyn Doyle), a recluse (Lindsay Dell, channeling Ally Sheedy) and a brain (Brian Austin Jr., looking and sounding like Napolean Dynamite) -- assembling after school for detention. Unfortunately, the teacher in charge (played by Stephen McDougall) is a war veteran who suffers from a psychotic PTSD episode that sends him on a killing spree.

It's hard to say what is worst about this film: the script, the acting, the direction, the cinematography, the special effects, the editing... it's all bad. There's no suspense or scares, the death scenes are pathetic, and the performances are diabolical (McDougall and Doyle are particularly bad -- neither have had prolific acting careers). Thankfully, I quite enjoy watching bad films, especially this awful, so I don't feel like my time was totally wasted, but I imagine most people will question their life choices after watching something this terrible.

This is a film I actively searched out. At the time of this review its very hard to find on DVD at a reasonable price online and there's no blu ray release unsurprisingly. Just to give you an idea of online prices the lowest ive seen it for with the U.S. release is around 15 dollars which is pricey for a used film thats only a little of 10 years old. There is a german release but from what ive seen its lower quality and I dont think it's playable in the U.S. For a brief synopsis avoiding spoilers, the film follows these students in detention and the teacher watching them eventually gets fed up and he uses his previous war time experience to hunt down the students. In my opinion the acting is subpar and at times dreadful. The teacher who served in the military also has PTSD but the PTSD turns him into a worse slasher Rambo which doesn't make sense. Also all of the characters in the detention hall feel like their from the Breakfast Club and even has direct line and scene rips. At least the film looks good, just kidding, it looks like it was recorded on the cheapest camera ever, its worse than any B-movie cinematography like anything is better than this and after hearing the German release has worse quality I don't even know how that's possible. I have also heard a few rumors for why this film is so hard to find, first someone from the cast or production team destroyed copies and the other story i heard is a lot of copies were accidently destroyed or misplaced, I find both of these very unlikely. In my personal opinion there are two more likely scenarios, the first is that the release was limited especially with how low the budget seems during viewing and my other thought is this is a forgotten film, people probably have copies somewhere of this movie but theyve just forgotten about owning this film or just having a lying around not knowing its worth a small but high price for a recent film. I got my own copy from a dvd sale for a single dollar. I think thats a fair price for the film since its super below average and not worth buying unless you want to laugh at a really bad film. The other thing that's lame is I can't find a streaming service where it's free and it's not even available on YouTube.