CAST: Carly Schroeder, Cody Linley, Micah alberti; DIRECTOR: Tyler Olier; GENRE: Horror/Suspense; RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes
Technical Assessment: 2
Moral Assessment: 2
CINEMA Rating: For viewers age 18 and above
Newly high school graduates Sandy (Carly Schorader) her brother and friends are having fun in their graduation party when they suddenly decide to go to the graveyard where they used to play hide and seek with rhyme as children and do it again as adults. On arrival at the game site, a strange girl appears and wants to play with them. Despite finding it odd, they think there is nothing wrong to have her in the game so they take her in. They continue the fun until the strange girl is trapped to be the end loser of the game and at the full sight of Sandy jumps off the cliff. The friends report the incident to the police, however the body is nowhere to be found. Since then, the friends of Sandy are killed one after another without any trace. They disappear together with memories of them except with Sandy who is the only one left to remember her missing friends. Because of this, she is mistaken to have developed lunatic tendencies and needed medical helps. In Sandy's struggle to prove otherwise, she realizes that a childhood friend named Angela whom they have wronged many years ago has something to do with the strange happenings particularly the disappearance of her friends.
One thing unusual in the story of the film Revenge of the College Ghost is that, the spirit in revenge is not of the dead rather that of a living person under the state of comma relying on life support who has been confined for a long time at the hospital. The idea of deleting people in the memories of people they lived with except the lead character is mind boggling for viewers. However, this niche of the story does not compensate the overall treatment of the film. The settings together with the flashback scenes are like bits and pieces put together without continuity. The cast does not look like newly high school graduates in their teens. They appear to be all experienced adults who are into active sex, drinking and looting spree. Acting wise most of the actors in the film could not do any better. The film is actually more of a suspense thriller than horror. The appearance of the shaking ghost does not help either. Overall, the film has not much to offer technically.
Everybody is called to be good at any stage of life. The film Revenge of the College Ghost depicts that the wrong deeds in childhood will haunt and even make a person's life miserable. It touches on a confusing theme of the unlikely wandering of a revengeful ghost of a still living person that is capable of killing people who wronged her in the past. With the varying manners of death particularly the very gory ones, obviously, life is not valued in this film. The young people depicted in the film have the tendency to be irresponsible and insensitive. Whilst the film has the context of the western culture, the Filipino viewers may be cautioned that high school graduation weekend happening can be wholesome as against sexually-oriented, alcoholism, looting and daring graveyard night game as depicted in the film. Even the lead character who initially resists but eventually joins the looting and even unofficially applies euthanasia to the girl in comma. The little effort that show good sides of the characters are hardly notice due to overwhelming exposure of conflicting values in the film.
