School Movie Review: Too many subjects in a forgettable horror flick
School(1.5 / 5)
You can understand the novelty of a horror film when you witness its first shot. Ominous music swells, a few leaves rustle, doors slam against each other… you get it. For a change, in School, the opening shot is placed in a way that a ghost is projected on top of a koi fish tank, which is then teleported to a person’s face. The ghost has not entered the man, but instead, chills on his face like a mask. After a suspense-filled moment, the screen fades to black. And the nightmare has just begun—for the school, its students, and the audience watching an overstuffed potboiler masquerading as a horror film.
Cast: Yogi Babu, Bhumika Chawla, KS Ravikumar, Bagavathi Perumal, Chaams and Nizhalgal Ravi
Director: RK Vidhyaadaran
Director RK Vidhyaadaran seems to have lost his way in creating an earnest drama based on school students’ waning sense of belonging and ego clashes. Oh, the film is also about the sense of belonging and ego clashes of the aavis as well—Yes, there are two. Usually, these are twists that are revealed at some pivotal moment, but as the film aimlessly wanders from one plot point to another, it is better to cut to the chase and break these open, as there are several surprises awaiting viewers.
Nambirajan (Bagavathi Perumal), the school’s principal, is at the centre of a controversy as strange ghosts begin killing students who read his book, Mindset to Success. The film invests itself in this for a while, and just when it starts to get interesting with a few revelations, a few students break into a random dance number for their cultural programme, and the camera takes a voyeuristic angle even before the music begins. Later, Chaams as Manmadhan indulges in a few gags. Then, police officer Kaleeshwaran’s (KS Ravikumar) son gets into trouble after the aavis enter into a few school teachers. It gets exhausting, and everything from there becomes absurdly campy. For a film as erratic as School, you are not sure whether the makers want you to take its subjects seriously, or just regurgitate all of them only to forget it until a new academic year (read: nightmare) begins.
Yogi Babu as Kanagavel and Bhumika as Anbarasi only arrive at the halfway point, which by itself feels like an eternity. However, the building blocks of School’s story finally reveal itself but it soon crumbles under the weight of its own inanity and overt messaging. Mastaan (Nizhalgal Ravi) is characterised as a villain who sends ghosts to people’s doorsteps like food delivery apps. He even points to a few aavis in a room—a word that’s repeated a gazillion times—like they are exhibit A, B and C. His appearance, styled to reflect a particular religion, veers dangerously close to stereotyping members of that community.
I wish that were all.
Kanagavel and Anbarasi remain oddly detached and unaffected by the deaths rattling the school. For actors of such calibre, it’s disheartening to watch their expressions stay plastic, delivering motivational lines one after another like they're reporting weather conditions. None of the students, not even one, stay long in your memory to care for them, let alone root for their survival. The dubbing is a wreck, and the flashback sequences are flimsy. The politics of the film are laughable, to say the least. One of the ghosts, an atheist, dances to an ‘Amman song’ before spreading ‘positive aura’ to the school; A student ecstatically says that if someone gets a no caste/religion certificate, the dowry system will be eliminated. Sigh, if that is all that it takes...
But what remains from all the strewn papers of this clumsy screenplay is how the School manages to deliver simple, meaningful concepts to its audience, like the affirmation 'I am enough' or how they can change their perception of what defines ‘success’ and ‘failure’. However, the horror whimpers, the jokes don't land, messages barely make an impact, and the only test this school and its students manage to ace is testing your patience.