Tuesday, October 01, 2019

Killer High: The Mascot Massacre


Usually, yearbooks do not suggest a “most likely to be the final girl” superlative, because that implies everybody else is going to die. Generally, that is a real bummer. In this case, it has been ten years since graduation, but the rules of slasher movie survival still apply in Jem Garrard’s Killer High, a Syfy original film, which releases today on DVD.

Sabrina Swanson was definitely most likely to succeed material, so it is a bit of a surprise that she didn’t. It was bad luck that kept her in their dying town, nursing her ailing mother, while the rest of her Wallingham High classmates left to get on with their lives. She has poured her heart and soul into the upcoming reunion, so she will have a chance to relive past glory and once again take center stage. Of course, she can’t do it alone, so she ropes her bestie Margo and Ronnie, the high school-geek-for-life into helping her.

Since all the other venues in town went out of business, she will hold the reunion back in dear-old shuttered Wallingham. Naturally, cell service is spotty out there. Plus, three brainless teens recently disappeared thereabouts. Yes, but we know from the prologue they were actually dispatched by the monster, a giant supernatural incarnation of the school’s mascot, the Wallingham Warthog. That’s right sweathogs, it’s time to warthog and die.

If you were tempted to check-out at “Syfy original film,” we understand where you are coming from. For what it’s worth, this if the third Syfy B-movie special we have covered on DVD and it is by far the most amusing—not exactly good, but amusing. Garrard and screenwriter Suzanne Keilly (who has real writing credits, like Light as a Feather and Ash vs. the Evil Dead) diligently mine the high school reunion under extreme stress for as many laughs as they can scratch out. Thanks to the attitude they instill in the film, we do not feel like complete idiots watching a film about monster warthog prowling the halls of the high school, preying on drunken victims.


Believe it or not, Asha Bromfield and Varun Saranga have a fair amount of screen charisma as Margo and Ronnie. However, Kacey Rohl and Humberly Gonzalez really kick up the energy level and bring out the claws, vamping it up as Swanson and Rosario, her former rival for campus domination.

Killer High is definitely a moron movie, but it has school spirit. It’s dumb in a good way. Recommended for horror fans looking to put something on to turn their brains off, Killer High releases today on DVD.