The poster for "The Innsmouth School for Girls" shows two girls in school outfits running away from some monster. It says, "Recommended for Adult Entertainment." It's produced by "Gooey Productions" which has made a series of, let's say, less than top of the line films. As I settled down to watch, my expectations were set. But you know what? A funny thing happened on the way to watching what I expected to be a piece of shlock film-making -- a fair HP Lovecraft adaptation broke out.
"The Innsmouth School for Girls" is a pretty decent adaptation of HP Lovecraft's "The Shadow over Innsmouth." Barnabas Marsh and his family are there, Zadok Allen is there to give exposition, and the legend and story-line of Lovecraft's novella is there in spades. Hilda Sofia Bautista, in her first movie role (she gets the "Introducing" credit), stars as Roberta Olmstead who comes to stay at the titular school. When she gets there she and her fellow students realize that there is something odd with the staff and with the people in Innsmouth...
I was pleasantly surprised at how well this played as an actual Lovecraft adaptation. Just well done all around. Writer/director Joshua Kennedy seems to have more than just a passing familiarity with his source material (for example, the narrator in Lovecraft's tale is unnamed, but if you research Lovecraft you know that in notes he wrote about the story he named him as "Robert Olmstead", so the protagonist's name is a clever renaming) and handles everything really well for a low budget film.
All the actors give solid performances that belies how new they are to the task. Almost the entire cast is, apparently, new to movies and the film actually celebrates that with an extended end credit sequence. My biggest complaint is that the movie just sort of "ends" in the middle of things, not sure if they just ran out of money or time but it just sort of rushes to a completion and then stops.
All in all, "The Innsmouth School for Girls" get a solid, and surprising, recommendation.
