Boarding School is a 2018 horror film about a young boy who becomes fascinated with his dead grandmother and is sent to an isolated boarding school for misfits run by a mysterious headmaster and his wife.
If there is anything we positively can count on in horror films (and there’s actually a lot), it’s that boarding schools are the worst. They are practically a subgenre all their own, with the recent Down A Dark Hall another in the mix that fits the bill. Now comes Boaz Yakin‘s latest, appropriately called Boarding School, a rather derivative piece of low hanging dried fruit that is not without some clever moments but is otherwise a meandering mess that doesn’t merit much interest.
Jacob (Luke Prael) is a troubled twelve-year-old, typically lost in his comic books and horror movies, afflicted with a near crippling case of night terrors, leaving his mother (Samantha Mathis) exasperated. A target for school bullies, who question his gender (he tends to dress in old women’s clothes at home), he’s eventually told he will move to a new school, this after his grandmother dies. It’s run by Dr. Sherman (Will Patton) and his wife (Tammy Blanchard), who assure Jacob’s parents that they can help his condition. Once there, he discovers the home is ruled by a pair of wild eccentrics, making friends with fellow children Phil (Nadia Alexander), a burn victim, and Christine (Sterling Jerins), a murder suspect.
Written by Yakin, who has had past success with films like Remember the Titans and the Now You See Me films (writer), Boarding School is a mostly superficial story that colors inside the lines most of the way. Things go bump in the night, jumpscares abound, and there’s plenty of contrived moments that don’t quite ring true. Jacob is creepy, as expected, but so is just about everyone in the story, the other ‘students’ in the school a gaggle of oddities that are all under the thumb of the oppressive, abusive, highly-religious, Sherman. This is a school for “freaks” as Christine calls them, and we soon wonder what’s the connection and where it is heading.
There’s certainly a big enough box of tricks at play here, the large cast and awkward personalities lending the film some potential, though tonally it’s a little unsettling as it spends its first half more in study than horror. These characters generate some interest, with Phil the most endearing, Alexander’s performance easily the film’s highlight. However, Boarding School – and it hopelessly generic name – is destined for other things and slips into the trappings of the genre, where nightmares come to life. While we see Jewish people and Nazi concentration camps, we also watch Jacob explore the duality of his sexuality with a whacked out Christine.
There’s much more as well, the film more odd than compelling, led by a mostly all-child cast that just don’t have the weight behind them to give this the punch it needs. Naturally, as most do in this genre, it all escalates to violence, and while that does offer a flurry of energy, the film is just too flat and slow, working hard to try and ‘say something’ but ultimately limping along without any heart. A frustrating pass.