Graphic restraint

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This article was published 22/05/2021 (1624 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An enduring horror movie type is centred on setting of a sorority/boarding-school-for-girls. Notwithstanding the occasionally prurient approach to this setup, the subgenre is marked by a few standout thrillers such as Black Christmas (1974), Phenomena (1985) and Suspiria (both 1977 and 2018), as well as lesser lights such as The House on Sorority Row (1982) and the Spanish proto-giallo The House That Screamed (1969).

It’s a tricky kind of movie to take on these days. The sex-violence mix of giallo thrillers, for example, doesn’t fly in contemporary films.

So writer-director Simon Barrett negotiates the Winnipeg-lensed Seance — his first feature — with surprising restraint, given the violent excesses of his past screenplays such as You’re Next and The Guest.

The setting is a snooty boarding school, the Edelvine Academy for Girls, where we are immediately privy to the demise of Kerrie (Megan Best) after a prank in which a former student is seemingly summoned from the dead in a midnight ritual.

Arriving to take the presumed suicide Kerrie’s space is Camille Meadows (Suki Waterhouse).

Camille is a formidable young woman who, once enrolled by the school’s stern headmistriss Mrs. Landry (Marina Stephenson-Kerr), promptly ignores the school’s established pecking order, provoking alpha-bitch Alice (Inanna Sarkis) and her minions into a literal fight for a place at the table.

The other mean girls include Yvonne, Rosalind and Lenora, played respectively by Winnipeg actors Stephanie Sy, Djouliet Amara and Jade Michael.

Camille is more than just a provocateur. She seems very interested in the circumstances of Kerrie’s suicide.

A possible Dana-Scully-in-training, she is not afraid to examine the supernatural forces that seem to be at work, disrupting the school’s ancient electrical system, which is attended by Mrs. Landry’s son Trevor (Seamus Patterson).

Trevor may or may not be a wolf attending the girls’ school flock.

But Camille is no sheep. And her reckless ways only succeed in endearing her to one student, the terrified Helina (Ella-Rae Smith), who actually has good reason to be afraid. Someone or something is picking off the student body one by one in a series of PG-rated murders. (The killer’s choice of disguise is a traditional Japanese Noh mask, as opposed to that of a hockey goalie.)

Seance is a good-looking film despite a small budget, and on one level, director Barrett seems to be leaning into some of the absurdities of the genre, including casting women well into their 20s as teens — Waterhouse is 29 — or staging conflicts that wouldn’t be out of place in a women’s prison movie.

Yet even with the more graphic violence at the film’s denouement, there is a certain sweetness, with an appeal that goes beyond the young-adult-friendly content.

Despite her ferocity, Camille emerges as a kind of unique romantic figure, in a way that transcends the tropes of the genre. Waterhouse, a former model, wears it well.

Seance is now available on digital platforms and on demand, and will be available on the streaming service Shudder later this year.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing