A Frightful School Horror

A Frightful School Horror seems obviously marketed at the teen girls who went ape-shit over Ringu in Japan, because of which it may be lazily discredited. Still, it uses many of the same techniques, minus plot and character development, to squeeze a fair amount of tension out of nearly nothing at all. Just like in real life, eh? Unless you are being actively targeted by a mugger or worse, the fear most of us feel is just wafting by on a breeze, so breathe deep if you come across this on a rental shelf.

The Newcomer From Hell

Avoid child actors at night. But do try to wring as much dread as possible out of the slow appearance of a little girl's face in the dark. ~

This Newcomer is gimpy, to be sure, and the stilted performances from its younger actors (all of 8-years-old if they're a day) do everything they can to destroy any tension available. Hell, even the fact that I couldn't understand their language and had to rely on really horrible subtitles did nothing to mitigate the fact that these child-thespians are better off watching telly than acting. Even so, only jaded Asian-horror dorks looking for something they've never seen before will be unmoved by glacial, creepy sequences in a darkened shed, where the newcomer's eerie face might pop out at any moment. Sure there's no plot, sure there's no payoff, but for most horror viewers this first short plays out like a good old reliable H.H. Munro story. Good for those late evenings when the shadows outside take on their own forms.

The Cursed Science Room

This is a nice little Fear-gasm, cranking maximum tension from a minimum of anything. It includes 20 minutes of creeping fear with little to no release. ~

The science room story is ostensibly a 'campfire fable' told among three hyper-jumpy swim-team girlies that involves a female 'enitity person' (subtitles, natch) with no face, who will rip your face off if you enter her classroom at 8:45pm, which is just what the girls-within-the-fable do. Following is ground-level terror, seemingly endless, leisurely shots of very alone females walking through darkened space, never knowing what if any horror they'll suddenly face. What makes this work is how closely it mirrors how fear works in real life. When you've been scared walking into your own darkened basement late at night, you (hopefully) haven't had the tension-release of some hockey-masked goon jumping out at you with a chainsaw, just the slowly ebbing pure adrenaline of imagination-fueled horror.

At the risk of spoiling the story, that's about all you'll get from this, the best of the three short subjects, but damn it's nice to be credited with the ability to use your own mind's eye once or twice. My wife got angry with me for making her watch this.

The Crucified Girl

Those who feel pity for dead animals are cursed, cursed to bleed from the ears and bore the viewer. ~

This criminally weak capper to a pretty strong first two acts makes almost no sense and has little to recommend it save - for you school-yard London Fog wearers out there - an enervating sequence of teen girls doing poor gymnastics. In it, a weird looking girl who takes pity on a dying raven is doomed to become one herself - and then get hit by a train - or something. Stop the tape before you waste your time with this sub-standard effort.

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Overall, two tasty bits of terror-mongering for those willing to let go, (you Asian horror geeks who need the next level need not apply) and one complete dud. Though A Frightful School Horror isn't exactly worth dropping mucho dinero on your own DVD copy (unless you're an Asian horror completist) it is well-worth a short night of skin-crawling fun. And if you have a thing for teenage Japanese girls, (And who doesn't? ~ Ed.) this compilation, in its harmless way, could freeze the cockles of your heart.