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Reviews
Prep School (2015)
Bad Friends (and when to dump them)
We all had friends in high school that we didn't think were particularly good people. Nevertheless, we clung onto them like life rafts amidst the storm.
Prep School plays like an 85-minute morality play devoted entirely to this concept, and what happens when those "convenient friends" become so volatile and dangerous that your social standing becomes secondary to preventing a tragedy (or in this case, multiple tragedies).
This isn't a new concept for a movie. Heathers and Mean Girls both covered this territory, but those films had satirical spins with larger-than-life characters, while this film plays out with a (mostly) straight face. First-time filmmaker Sean Nichols Lynch gets a little self-indulgent in places, like an English teacher's take-down of a student's essay (also entitled Prep School) that could be interpreted as a meta analysis of the movie itself.
Among the actors, Carly Schroeder and Ben Bellamy are the clear stand-outs as Kyra and Caleb, although they also have the most interesting material to work with. Taylor Lambert also deserves credit for effectively pulling off the toughest role of the film, narrowly navigating a mostly unlikable protagonist's journey from whiny do-gooder to wild-eyed insurgent. It's a difficult and thankless performance in the middle of much flashier heavies, so kudos to Lambert on that one.
Phantasm (1979)
Iconic and brilliant horror film
As far as horror films go, Phantasm is a film with much on its mind. It is at once an elegiac meditation on life and death, a poignant story of a boy on the verge of manhood, while also serving as a macabre funhouse ride, bouncing recklessly between reality and the dreamworld, offering a robust mythology encompassing alternate dimensions, zombie dwarfs, and, most iconically, flying silver spheres that drill into the brains of their victims.
The story is set in small town America circa the late 1970s, and focuses on two young men, 13-year-old Michael and his older brother Jody, in the wake of the tragic death of their parents. Jody has taken a break from his exciting life as a musician on the road to take care of his little brother, who idolizes Jody to the point of following him around town, in the fear that he will one day abandon him as their parents did. Michael's constant surveillance of his brother leads him to Morningside Cemetery, where Jody attends a friend's funeral, after which, Michael witnesses Morningside's enigmatic undertaker, known only as the Tall Man, scoop up the 200-pound casket in his arms, toss it back into the hearse, and drive off, leaving an empty grave. From there, the film's focus turns to Michael's investigation of Morningside, eventually uncovering the Tall Man's fiendish plot to wipe out the entire town in order to resurrect their corpses as demonic dwarfs and use them as servants in his ever-growing army of the undead.
The loss of liberty, characterized by enslavement and brainwashing, is the central issue in the film. Those unlucky enough to be buried in a Morningside Cemetery plot are dug up by the Tall Man, shrunk down to dwarfs, and resurrected, only to serve for all eternity as the mindless minions under his control, tasked with furthering his reign of terror and harvesting more cadavers for his army of ghouls. It is no coincidence that the Morningside Funeral Home greatly resembles a Southern plantation (the shooting location was the historic Dunsmuir estate in Oakland), just as the Tall Man is dressed impeccably as a Southern gentleman of considerable means, for the character is playing the role of slavemaster, and his dwarfs, gravediggers, and murderous spheres are his slaves.