Aiming for Mean Girls but succeeding only in being mean, this dismal attempt to take high school comedy into The Twilight Zone is so inept it’s depressing.
Julie Benz - unrecognisable from the sweetly unsuspecting girlfriend of TV’s serial killer Dexter - plays Danielle, a teen bitch who’d like to think she has a sharp tongue but merely has a plastic spoon in her mouth (to 'wit': “Budgets are for poor people”).
Exactly a year ago, Danielle and her fellow Valley High ‘Huns’ (Dawson’s Creek alumni Bilderbeck and Keena) got away with causing the death of fellow student Chastity. Her crime? Dating broody plank Drew (Jonathan Brandis), the man of Danielle’s dreams.
On the anniversary of Chastity’s ‘suicide’, a sexy, enigmatic exchange student called Katarina (Suzanna Urszuly) wafts into class and straight up Danielle’s nose. She makes an immediate connection with Drew. She must be removed.
Naturally, Danielle’s vendetta backfires and she becomes convinced that Katarina is the ghost of Chastity.
Even more alarmingly, the Huns begin to age at an alarming rate.
After introducing its painfully familiar register of bubbleheads, nerds and jocks, the film takes unfunniness to new depths with its wholesale mockery of geriatric afflictions.
Incontinence, hair loss, brittle bones, deafness, failing eyesight, breathing difficulties, halitosis – ironically, the gags get more feeble the longer it drags on. Only the characters’ sides are in danger of splitting.
You might expect better from a director with episodes of both Twilight Zone and witchy TV hit Charmed under his belt. But the slapstick and supernatural elements are slung together so shoddily that John Kretchmer appears to have been struck down by some sort of filmmakers’ dementia.
Christopher Lloyd must also have taken leave of his senses when accepting a career-low role as a creepy, accident-prone teacher. And what possessed Janet Leigh to play a catatonic care-home patient is anyone’s guess.
It barely runs to 80 minutes, but come the end you’ll feel much older.
Elliott Noble
