Haunted High (2012)

The ghost of a previous headmaster returns to wreak havoc and treat people to bad puns in a fairly poor haunted high school offering.I was attracted by Danny Trejo and Charisma Carpenter headlining the DVD box in Poundland. Well Danny Trejo spends much of the film locked in a cupboard and Charisma Carpenter is barely in it. And the UK DVD box doesn't feature the dreaded words "SyFy Channel."The cast is OK, mostly, the script is poor, and the horror is too explicit for non-horror audiences, but far too lame for hardcore horror fans.

I normally do not considered the rating given by IMDb visitor about the movie, however, on this particular movie, I should say that the rating was too much on the high side. The rating should be max 1. I was tempted to watch this movie because of Charisma Carpenter was mentioned as on of the star. If you are talking about using somebody's name to sell your movie, this is a very good example. Charisma did appear, although in a total scene of less than 1 minutes. I don't even know why she accepted this part, it is really degrading. When you see a ghost movie, you expect something that is scary, but on this one due to the bad story and strange script, you do not feel the fear. Instead it is a hollow feeling, like if you want a very unromantic love story. One of the ghost action which I can not understand is how it is possible that you have a collapse building on one section of the school and the rest of the building seems okay and of course to follow the title, the ghost will have the incredible power of shaking the building like an earthquake. An of course the usual light that is always flickering when you are entering a room in a ghost story is there. A movie is basically a collection of acts being put together by a director to make sense out of this collection. There is a recipe for each type of movie. But if you do a terrible mixed, then what you will get is a make up story with something supposed to be scary but end up being funny..... I give 1 out of 10, because there is no zero or more for the effort of making something so bad to annoy other people.....

I was expecting so much from this movie, and I was bitterly disappointed. The previews of "Haunted High" show what looks to be a decent haunted school movie, but the opening exposition is weak and the plot gets even more ridiculous as the movie continues. There's barely a plot, only a body count. Once again, someone with a misconception of ghosts and haunted houses creates a movie that carries no logic and absolutely no credibility, but then, this movie was made specifically for SyFy Channel, so the budget could not have been that great. The plot involves a group of students trapped in a haunted school after hours by the ghost of a cruel former teacher who dabbled in Satanism, played by M.C.Gainey, better known as Mr. Friendly from "Lost," who is the most talkative evil ghost I've ever seen in an independent horror movie. As he goes through killing students, joined by a wild-haired succubus who crawls the walls, he spouts weak puns like a poor man's Freddy Krueger. The so-called haunting activity is ridiculous (the Biology frogs return to life), and I don't care how cursed a school is, ghosts cannot alter reality. (One student goes out the window to realize he's still trapped in the school.) What starts as a ghost movie turns into a splatter and gore flick. At one time or another, someone is always asking, "What's going on?" before predictably wandering off and getting knocked off as uncreative as possible. Charisma Carpenter also allegedly stars in this movie, but her character is killed as fast as she appears in one of the shortest movie appearances by a major actress for a character ever. Danny Trejo pulls a strong performance as the janitor with the knowledge of the school's past to save the students. Bottom line: what starts as a neat premise never goes anywhere. SyFy needs to stop producing tripe like this and go back to airing the classics, or at least hire filmmakers with some writing talent. The only neat thing about this movie is a reference to "Sinister Sites," the fictional paranormal TV series from "House Of Bones" which actually did star Charisma Carpenter so apparently these films might share the same writers. Bottom line: "Haunted High" is barely worth watching as a waste of your time, but if you really want to get scared, rent "The Others" or "The Haunting."

I think that my summary line says it all - this movie had potential. Unfortunately it faced the same obstacle many previous SciFi Originals had faced before. Insufficient funding. How are we supposed to believe the story takes place in a big school, when we only see one class of about 15 people? And the external and internal shots don't seem to match? A bigger building with more actors would have made this more believable.As for the story, there are too many things unexplained. Some are hinted at (like the student-teacher relationship between a female student and her music teacher), but they are not resolved. What was 'the cult' all about? What was the director's main goal (apart from aimlessly killing all the students and staff).The thing that bugged me the most was Charisma Carpenter. She was in the film for only two minutes and then got killed off. What the heck? Why not have her as a helpful librarian who knows stuff about the occult.Even with all those faults this was a rather enjoyable film. If you can catch it on TV and you like some mild jump scares, then I can recommend it.