School of the Damned

I've subjected myself to some pretty awful movies in the past, but this really is the pits.

The script was reportedly finished in 2 weeks and the actual filming in 8 days, during school term so as to use students as extras.

It shows in being so poorly made.

I'm positive the pupils could of done better themselves.

School of the Damned: A rather blatant rip off of Children of the Damned/Village of the Damned. It opens with a teacher being defenestrated by young children using ESP. A new teacher arrives and gradually notices something is odd about the Herbert West (!) School. Conspiracies, bullies bricked, nasty janitors dealt with, all by a group of seven year old children. Effects aren't always great but it's worth a watch. Again this might have worked better as an episode of an anthology series. Directed by Peter Vincent, written by Philip Dyas. On Netflix. 6/10.

"School of the damned" is a pretty promising title for an intended horror movie, but they didn't in any way live up to it. It fails on the most basic aspects: the story is shaky and goes all over the place, the atmosphere isn't a bit scary, and the acting is below par. With the exception of attractive and sympathetic James Groom, who plays main character Tony, the new teacher who unknowingly enters this weird school, he's the only talented actor in the cast and does his best, but cannot help drowning in the silliness and amateurism that surrounds him. The children that are the sources of all evil are supposed to look extremely menacing and sinister, but cramping your face as if you're constipated doesn't really do the trick. The only thing I liked was the way all the scholars immediately, as a drilled army platoon, responded on the tapping of the staff of the headmaster, that was a nice find. But for the rest: disappointing and totally superfluous.

An absolute snooze fest, to quote Abe Simpson I coughed up scarier things. Don't waste your time on this.

Plagiarized shamelessly from the book, "The Midwich Cuckoos", John Wyndham 1957, adapted into two movies, "Village of the Damned", 1960, and 1995 (both excellent, I thought!)

None of the kids in this movie can act, but that actually might fall on the shoulders of the director and writers.