Editorials
Top 15 Back To School Horror Films!!!
By Zena S. Dixon.
It’s time to go back to school! Get your pencils ready, dust your books off and lets bring out the horror! Maybe you’re starting school, maybe your kid is starting school…or maybe you don’t need school because you’re one of those rare, lucky individuals who excel without it. Depending on the position you’re in, this list will make you dread going back to school or happy to know you’re pretty safe…for now. Either way, let us all indulge!
Although there were many candidates for this list, I decided to go with these 15 films! As a bonus, these horrors contain survival tips for the school year. So let’s get ready for Back to School: TOP 15 School Horrors!
Post will contain spoilers, so BEWARE! Rawr!
This glorious cheese fest of a slasher takes place just a few weeks before graduation day at Midville High School. Unfortunately for students, getting people to sign their yearbook is the LAST of their troubles. Lurking around campus is a mysterious psychopath who slashes people’s guts out. And what makes it worse is that he or she insists on using a timer.
Tip? Graduate early to avoid a splatter fest.
A prank by Theta Pi leaves one of their best friends dead. A couple of months later a mysterious killer roams their sorority house, crashing their party and sending random texts.
Planning on joining a sorority? Well don’t!
What would High School be without popularity? Ask Tamara. Tamara is an unpopular and unattractive girl who is picked on by her peers. Not only is Tamara a witch, but she accidentally gets murdered. Don’t cry though. She comes back as a seductress, sex kitten on the road for revenge against those responsible.
We learned this one in kindergarden people! Be nice to everyone because you never know what people know about you or if they are witches who can come back from the dead to kill you. They may even make you eat a glass or perhaps your own fingers.
Sisters Ginger and Brigitte have an obsession with death and gore. Alienation in school becomes the least of their troubles once Ginger is attacked by a werewolf. Geez. Going through puberty is tough enough, but imagine growing hair all over your body and having a thirst for blood.
Tip: When turning into a werewolf, keep your thirst for blood minimal by avoiding large crowds… unless it’s with people you don’t like, then go for it! Good luck!
Who needs class when you have metal? Eddie is an outcast because of his preference of music…. Clearly it sucked to be him back in ’86! If he was around today and was a huge fan of metal, I doubt that porky jocks with stiff hair would attack him in empty wood shop classes.
If you idolize a rock star, lets hope he doesn’t send you a demonic record when he dies or makes you a mix tape that melts your ears off as soon as it plays.
I’m sure we’ve all had a secret admirer! Well, this movie has one of those in it. Back in 1982 at Crippen High School, there was a blood bath of horrors; however, the killer was never identified. Five years later, a movie production company comes to the abandoned campus to make a movie based on the previous deadly events.
Tip for this one: If you have a secret admirer, run.
A string of gory suicides forces a detective to try to unmask the reason behind it all.
From this horror, you should take away the simple lesson: Don’t follow the crowd. If 54 people simultaneously jump onto the path of an ongoing train…it doesn’t mean you have to!
Ah, a classic. A horror filled with alien parasites that enter through the human mouth and turn their host into a violent zombie.
This movie is a lot like teen pregnancy. Bottom line, don’t end up a zombie, or worse, a cast member on Teen Mom. But if it happens, just remember that I warned you about those sneaky people.
Sarah is the new girl at the Catholic prep school and feels connected with three other girls who practice witchcraft. The girls abuse their powers and eventually turn on Sarah.
Remember when I said be nice to everyone? Well, be nice includes not doing spells and putting curses on other people!
Sydney is being stalked by a mysterious killer known as Ghostface. Meanwhile, everyone around her is getting murdered.
Important note: Just because you’re in school doesn’t mean you’re safe from wackos. If something bad goes down remember: EVERYONE is a suspect. So if you keep this simple rule of horror, you should be very proud and very safe! Thanks, Randy.
Students begin to become suspicious of their school’s faculty after strange events begin occurring.
You better hope that Elijah Woods attends whatever school you or your loved ones attend if you want to feel safe from aliens.
Destined to kill vampires, cheerleader Buffy takes up arms to defend us all.
Geez. Wouldn’t career day be so much easier if you already knew you had to be a Vampire Slayer?
Poor Carrie. She’s super shy and her mom is crazy terrifying. She already doesn’t fit in, it doesn’t help that she discovers her telekinesis ability. Unfortunately, when she’s pushed to the limit on Prom, people will pay.
My advice? If there is a girl named Carrie, just skip the prom or any similar events. It’s all overrated at that point!
A masked killer stalks four teens responsible for an accident that happened years ago.
Why not just wait to get your revenge at the 10 year reunion? And maybe it can be emotional revenge, why does it always have to physical?
In every school there is a Queen B, in this one there’s a terrifying Black Queen. Suzy arrives from America to the prestigious dance academy in Germany, only to suspect that there is something evil going on behind closed doors. Eventually, Suzy will unveil the dark history of her new school.
If you can’t beat the Queen B, either join her or go against her, either way it can be haunting.
Wishing all the students a wonderful, horrific school year. If this was your Back to School: TOP 15 School Horrors, what would be on your list?
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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