If you give this movie the benefit of the doubt and make it through the absolutely horrendous first 20 minutes, you’ll find that it only gets marginally better.
This movie isn’t even worth watching on an eight-hour-long flight, as evidenced by a 5.1/10 rating on IMDB, 25% average on Rotten Tomatoes and 1.7 stars on Letterboxd. Unfortunately for me and my time, I knew nothing about it before pressing play.
For starters, it is written similarly to a Wattpad fanfiction from the 2010s. The characters are vapid, superficial and worse, unoriginal.
Thank goodness we had Lori Granger (India Fowler) to narrate everything; otherwise, we would have had trouble following the conflict between her and the popular bully, Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza), or as the movie prefers to call her, the leader of “The Wolfpack.” It’s just such a complicated and unique storyline that we really need all the help we can get.
When the movie isn’t failing to sell the 1980s setting or shoving exposition down your throat, it is busy with ridiculous levels of violence and gore. They kill, I believe, over half a dozen characters for the title of prom queen. Don’t worry, though; more characters die and/or are maimed along the way.
If you enjoyed “Lisa Frankenstein” (2024), which this movie seems to be heavily referencing, you might enjoy it more than I did. But overall, it’s hard to care about the “triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of high school…” when your main character is a generic Mary Sue who is having an emotional affair with Tiffany’s boyfriend, Tyler Torres (David Iacono). Mind you, Lori is probably the most developed character in the film, and she’s fairly passive until the axe-wielding maniacs show up.
While I could include the list of things that are stupid or just plain bad about this movie, which I started writing while watching it, I’ll spare you, and end this here.
