Passed the time

Ghost story-cum-slasher flick. With the death of a student at the prestigious Edelvine Academy for Girls (following a 'Bloody Mary'-style attempt to conjure up the school ghost), new girl Camille arrives to fill her place. She soon finds herself butting heads with the 'mean girl' clique, resulting in detention for all. Not being the sharpest knives in the drawer, they all decide a good way to kill the time would be...another seance! This time they try to contact the spirit of the girl who died after the previous attempt. Before long, pupils start getting bumped-off in various gruesome ways. Putting their differences aside, Camille and the remaining girls try to find who/what's causing the deaths - and avoid becoming victims themselves. Suki Waterhouse and Inanna Sarkis head the cast as Camille, and Alice (head 'mean girl') respectively.

As usual, we have a cast of actresses in their mid to late 20s playing high school girls - and they're not bad. Don't get me wrong, I don't see any future Oscar winners, but they're okay for this - cute girls, getting stalked in labyrinthine corridors, and meeting grisly ends. It reminded me of several movies, including (and these are by no means spoilers for this) The Craft, 5ive Girls, Happy Death Day, The Innkeepers, Suspiria, and John Carpenter's The Ward. It also has a little of the Nancy Drew/Scooby-Doo 'teen mystery solver' vibe (although the stakes here are a lot higher!). The photography is good, it's atmospheric, and the effects are pretty good. On the minus side, it's cliched as hell (especially all the 'mean girl' bitching), drags in places, and brings some things completely out of nowhere (e.g. all of a sudden one character can fight like Jason Bourne??).

Okay time-filler 6/10