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Summer School Directed by: Ben Trandem, Lance Hendrickson, Steve Rhoden, Troy McCall & Mike Nelson Starring: Simon Wallace, Amy Cocchiarella, Tony Czech, Lance Hendrickson Reviewed by: Scott West |
| Final Score: Movie:   DVD Extras: Overall Score: |
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I first heard about this independent film at the 2006 Eerie Horror Film Festival. I missed it at that year's Fest. At the insistence of a couple of board members, the film was the first ever film brought back to do a repeat showing at the 2007 Fest. This time around, my schedule was going to force me to miss it yet again. Luckily, the directors were selling copies of their special edition DVD. The DVD itself is very well done. The packaging looks better than some I've seen on the shelves of the local Best Buy. The special features include outtakes, deleted scenes, trailers, a making-of documentary, a set of short films from the same company and (count 'em) 3 full length commentary tracks! For an indie film, I was impressed before I even watched the film. However, I've seen countless films that have great list of special features and no meat (pun definitely intended). So, production values aside, how does Summer School hold up? The story is thus...Charles (Simon Wallace), a writer for a horror movie review site, stays up late to catch up on his work by watching a marathon of horror films. When he gets to the first day of summer school the next morning totally exhausted from his long night, he falls asleep at his desk only to fall into a labyrinth of horror that that leads him through various scenarios covering different horror genres including creepy cults, mutant monsters, nazi exploitation, vampires and more. As the terror builds and dreams mix with reality, Charles loses sight of what is dream and what is reality as he lives what the film posters call "a horror fan's worst nightmare". The acting is heads above almost any independent horror flick that I've ever seen. Most of the film falls squarely on the head of Simon Wallace in the role of Charles as he weaves in and out of these various horror genres. Surprisingly, the young lad pulls it off with an ease seen rarely in hollywood and almost never in indie films. His costars do quite the job as well. His two slacker friends Dennis (Lance Hendrickson...with a "d") and Steve (Tony Czech) are funny enough without feeling stupid and annoying as their type of characters often do. They also show their acting chops by playing various roles as Charle's dreams jump from one genre to another. The rest of the cast each do a great job keeping the story moving along. What I love is that there's not one bad actor in the bunch as I hate seeing a great indie horror film ruined by that one horrid role that pulls you totally out of the ride. In a film that jumps through so many genres, the FX bear a lot of the weight in keeping things believable and running smooth and they don't disappoint. There was one scene in particular that I questioned on first viewing, but later realized that it did fit the genre in which it was played so it seems intentional. The rest of the FX are top notch. There's more than a couple of scenes that actually had me rewinding to look at again to see if I could catch if the FX were practical or CG and it's hard to tell at times...and I'm a jaded guy when it comes to FX. This movie jumps through so many mental twists, turns and dream sequences and does so much more finesse than a lot of Hollywood tripe that I've seen try to do the same things. In short, this film amazed me. I don't know what kind of budget these guys had, but they made a movie that is better than most major studio films I've watched lately and is definitely one of the top independent horror films that I've seen this year! |
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