SyFy vs. The Mynd: Killer High (2018)

Somewhat highly strung Sabrina (Kacey Rohl), whose high school life was the absolute high point of her existence, is only too delighted to organize the class of 2008’s ten year anniversary festivities. Thanks to the small town she has grown up in and never left slowly turning into a post-apocalyptic wasteland only waiting for an actual apocalypse to arrive, there’s no place for the reunion to take place in anymore than their old school itself, now waiting to be torn down to make room for a graveyard, apparently.

Her kinda-sorta school friends Margo (Asha Bromfield) and Ronnie (Varun Saranga) – she the nice cheerleader, he the picked-upon nerd who still carries a torch for said cheerleader – are roped into helping her out, and things seem to have worked out well enough once the big evening has arrived. If this continues, Sabrina might even be able to continue her old schoolyard domination of her rival and nemesis Rosario (Humberly González). Let’s just not mention that Rosario’s actual life has turned out rather more interesting than Sabrina’s has. Alas, nobody expected a teenager to dig up the school’s old, cursed warthog mascot costume and turn into a really crappy looking warthog monster, so this might just turn out to be the final reunion of any kind for most of the people involved.

If you are okay with watching a bunch of broad yet not unsympathetic walking talking tropes go through a by now pretty well-worn kind of set-up for a horror comedy that doesn’t seem to have either the inclination or the money for having much to offer in the horror part of its genre description, Killer High might be just the film for you. Well, it’s not actually as bad as all that, for while its director Jem Garrard does make some less than effective decisions, like repeatedly going into digital diorama mode (as seen in Age of Ultron) in scenes where we should witness actual action, her direction seems otherwise unspectacular yet effective. At the very least, the pacing is okay, and the comedy, while not surprising in any way shape or form, does not consist of the film winking and nudging in the direction of its audience ad nauseam. When it comes to high school reunion comedies, this certainly ain’t no Grosse Point Blank, but it’s actual character based humour. Why, some of the jokes are even funny, and only very few are actively annoying. It certainly helps that the cast seems to have fun and is generally funny, so the humour is generally delivered with a degree of verve.

This was written by Suzanne Keilly, who is also responsible for the script to Leprechaun Returns, a film that shares this one’s basic character arc of portraying at first inimical young women slowly coming together to conquer a supernatural threat with wit and violence. Though the Leprechaun film is clearly the superior effort, tighter, funnier and bloodier (or rather, better at showing off the blood it can afford than this one is). Now, could somebody hire her for a slightly higher budget affair not beholden to a SyFy Channel budget?


All of which still doesn’t make me sound terribly satisfied with Killer High, when it is indeed a perfectly decent movie to while away ninety minutes with, just not one you’d need to re-watch anytime soon.