John Chard

Caught between its aims? Three students get more than they bargained for when a theft of a test results paper leads to a deadly battle of wills with their kidnapped teacher, Mrs. Tingle. It seems to me that director and writer, Kevin Wiliamson, got confused as to which direction the film should go in. At times it's jaunty when the scene appears to call for menace, and at others just plain boring if the scene was meant to be actually funny (in that sarcastic, almost satirical way). The film could have worked at either being a comedy or a thriller, but the fusion of the two just doesn't work, and this failing has to fall at Williamson's door, it's as if Scream was all a fluke after all? The cast struggle with the meanderingly dull screenplay, only the stoic (and sexy) Helen Mirren salvaging any sort of dignity by realising early on that the core of the film calls for deft nastiness instead of outright villainy. Poor and practically unwatchable these days. 2/10