Her casual refusal to bow to the demands of the ruling clique leads to a fight which lands them all in detention, but it also wins her a place among them, along with the affections of the shyly endearing Helina (Ella-Rae Smith). This is Camille (all the names here seem to be drawn from Gothic literature), and she seems a little older than the others, notably calmer and more centred. The film proper opens with the arrival at the school of a new student (Suki Waterhouse, a standout in 2018’s Charlie Says), who is there to take the dead girl’s place. Before long a girl is dead and other girls whisper that her killer might be coming for all of them. They have to do something to pass the time in an elite private school which seems mostly empty, and they’re also exercising the type of entitled cruelty which a certain type of girl in every school is drawn to, but when they decide to stand before a mirror and try to summon the ghost long rumoured to haunt the establishment, they may have gone too far. You can check the RLJE and Shudder Facebook pages for announcements of a date.Lenora (Jade Michael), Bethany (Madisen Beaty) and their gang love to play tricks. It will be available to stream on Shudder later in the year. Hopefully, Barrett will continue directing, he certainly has a talent for it.Ī joint release between RJLE Films and Shudder, Seance will be released in theatres, digitally, and On-Demand on May 21st. Alice, Bethany and their crew are one-dimensional bitches that you just want dead which takes some of the edge off their deaths.Īpart from that Seance is a highly enjoyable film that kept me entertained and caught me off guard a couple of times. And even Camille seems a bit off at times. The only other problem of any note is that apart from Camille and Helina there’s not a lot in the way of likable characters. Still since it was rated “R” for bloody horror violence I was expecting a bit more gore. Seance saves most of its blood for the final act, but it does have a couple of messy deaths done without CGI. But it’s an annoyance, not a deal-breaker. It did leave me with one big question, and you’ll probably have it too. It also tosses in a few others for good measure to go out with a bloody satisfying bang. Seance takes the kind of twist that I usually would have hated and pulls it off. Simon Barrett director of SeanceĪnd that curve would be the last act. I have long wanted to make my own variation of this horror-mystery narrative, but with the added goal of weaving in supernatural elements, as ghost stories tend to be murder mysteries as well. It’s just enough to keep the plot feeling familiar enough that you don’t expect it when he throws a curve at you. Or there being one student our heroine can trust, in this case, Helina (Ella-Rae Smith, Into the Badlands). Just like he does with the film’s setup, Barett gives a nod to genre traditions like the icy headmistress whose son Trevor (Seamus Patterson, Channel Zero, Books of Blood) seems to be the only male on campus. Once the bodies start dropping Seance becomes a highly entertaining film. The girls know she wouldn’t just leave, and we know she’s dead. Shortly after, Lenora (Jade Michael, Hunter, Hunter) disappears, and a strange symbol is left on her bed. And it isn’t, it’s a hybrid ghost story/slasher that kicks into gear after another attempted prank, a seance to talk to Kerrie (Megan Best), the girl who just died, really does seem to reach something. But they’ve been the settings for horror films from Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory on through Satan’s School for Girls and The Woods.īarrett jumps right into the traditions with cliques, bitchy girls and a bit of brawling to make it clear this isn’t going to be an elevated horror film. And Seance even features a pair of ballet scenes as a nod to it. Suspiria is the most famous of films set in an all girl’s boarding school. Even immediately getting on the wrong side of Alice and her pack of mean girls doesn’t dampen her enthusiasm. Camille (Suki Waterhouse, Future World, The Bad Batch) is more than happy to fill that vacancy. This creates an opening for a new student at the ultra-prestigious Edelvine Academy for Girls. It ends, however, with the very real death of one of the girls. Now that he’s moved on to megabudget films, can Barrett fill his former collaborator’s place?Īlice (Inanna Sarkis, Boo 2! A Madea Halloween, Deported), Bethany (Madisen Beaty, The Clovehitch Killer, Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood) and their friends perform the ritual to summon their school’s alleged ghost as a prank on some of the other girls in their dorm. He’s probably best known though for the five feature films he wrote for director Adam Wingard including You’re Next and The Guest. In that capacity, he’s had a successful career dating back to a pair of 2004’s more enjoyable films, Dead Birds and Frankenfish. Seance marks the debut of Simon Barrett as a director, but not as a writer.
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