Editorials
High School Horror: Five Doomed Students Before ‘It Lives Inside’
Warning: Major spoilers for the following films abound.
When asked about the most horrific time in their lives, many will shudder then say the years they spent in high school. From unpredictable acne and savage bullies to the particularly brutal pain of childhood friends growing apart, the high school halls can sometimes feel more like a minefield. Horror creators have explored this familiar subgenre for decades, from early classics like I Was a Teenage Werewolf to the slick and witty slasher boom of the 90s.
Bishal Dutta’s terrifying It Lives Inside continues this tradition by blending high school horror with demonic possession to explore the terrors of finding your place in an unforgiving world. The film follows Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), a tortured student carrying something much darker than a challenging schedule. Her best friend is drifting away, she hasn’t slept in weeks, and she’s constantly toting a jar filled with a sinister black substance. More isolated with each passing day, Tamira needs help. If she can’t find someone to share this nightmarish burden, she may not make it to graduation.
While there may still be hope for Tamira, the same cannot be said for the following cinematic students who wind up succumbing to the terrors of high school horror. Below, Bloody Disgusting has assembled five similarly doomed students whose lockers remain haunted. What’s more, we even have an exclusive conversation with filmmaker Bishal Dutta, who shares his favorite high school horror movies ahead of It Lives Inside, which hits theaters nationwide on September 22nd via Neon. Get tickets now!
Carrie White – Carrie (1976)
Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) may be one of the loneliest characters the genre has ever known. Without a single friend in the world, Carrie is the target of relentless bullying from students and teachers alike. When a traumatic locker room prank goes way too far, one of her tormentors has a change of heart and Carrie’s luck finally begins to change. A popular classmate invites her to the prom and she discovers a burgeoning talent to move things with her mind. Unfortunately these isolated factors converge on one of the most horrific prom nights in cinematic history. A group of bullies have orchestrated a plot to dump pig’s blood on Carrie’s head moments after she’s crowned Prom Queen. Mortified and soaked in the sticky, red goo, Carrie unleashes her telekinetic fury on the unsuspecting crowd. The high school gymnasium becomes an inferno as she uses her powers to burn her classmates alive.
Andrew Detmer – Chronicle (2012)
The next film on our list begins with a familiar story. Boy encounters radioactive substance (venom, poison, gamma rays, what have you), boy gets powers. It’s a tale nearly as old as comics themselves. However, few iterations feel as authentic or devastating as Chronicle. Josh Trank’s directorial debut follows high school outcast Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHaan), the latest teen to undergo this physiological transformation after exploring a cavernous crater near a high school party. The story unfolds through camcorder footage as Andrew chronicles his daily life including abuse from his alcoholic father and his dying mother’s final days. Consumed with rage after a lifetime of torment, Andrew relishes the newfound ability to dominate the world around him and his friends face an impossible choice. They must weigh the life of their troubled friend against an incalculable degree of death and destruction.
Jennifer Check – Jennifer’s Body (2009)
Jennifer’s Body has aged very well. Due to a clumsy marketing strategy mostly focused on sexualizing it’s lead actress, the film bombed and relegated director Karyn Kusama to a liminal space she jokingly refers to as Movie Jail. However, it’s likely this poplike story of feminine empowerment in the aftermath of trauma was simply ahead of its time. In the past 14 years, Jennifer’s Body has not only become a cult favorite, but a feminist rallying cry proclaiming the dangers of shitty men. Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) is a popular cheerleader who runs afoul of a devilish boy band hoping to buy fame and fortune by using her as a virgin sacrifice. When Jennifer turns out to not be … less than virginal, the spell backfires conjuring a powerful succubus that transforms the traumatized teen into a boy-eating monster. As the male bodies begin to stack up, her best friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried) tries to save Jennifer from the monster living inside her only to realize she may be too late to separate the two.
Casey Becker – Scream (1996)
The opening scene of Wes Craven’s slasher masterpiece Scream could serve as a perfect short film in and of itself. Popular student Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) is planning a quiet evening at home with some popcorn and a video when a stranger calls on the phone. The smooth-talker on the other end of the line hints at danger when he asks about her favorite scary movie, but the conversation takes a frightening turn when Casey realizes that whoever she’s talking to is lurking outside the windows of her remote farmhouse. With her boyfriend held hostage on the back lawn, Casey finds herself forced to play a high stakes game of movie trivia that leads to her brutal death just seconds before help arrives. Her desk may be empty in class the next day, but Casey’s harrowing death kick started a beloved film franchise that would revolutionize the genre and pave the way for one of horror’s favorite final girls. What can we say? Sometimes less is more.
Amy Herman – Megan is Missing (2011)
Michael Goi’s disturbing film follows two friends from opposite sides of the social lexicon as they try to navigate the difficult world of adolescence. The first half of this found footage nightmare plays out like a typical teen drama as Megan (Rachel Quinn) begins an online courtship with a cute boy named Josh (Dean Waite). When Megan disappears after a clandestine date, her best friend Amy (Amber Perkins) begins investigating this mysterious boy from a neighboring school and winds up falling into the same hellish trap. The film concludes with the final 20 minutes of Amy’s hijacked video diary as we bear witness to her unthinkable fate. In the hands of a sadistic murderer, the frightened girl endures horrific humiliation and torture. After finally learning the details of Megan’s death, we’re bombarded with one of the most upsetting deaths ever committed to film. Purportedly inspired by actual events, Megan is Missing will hopefully serve as a cautionary tale about the dangers of online interaction for those brave enough to watch.
It Lives Inside hits theaters nationwide on September 22nd. Get tickets now!
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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