Movie Review: Haunted High (2012)

The film stars Jonathan Baron, Danny Trejo, Lauren Pennington, M.C. Gainey and Charisma Carpenter.

I came across this film on one of our movie channels a few days ago and, while I admittedly had some doubts about it from the start, I ended up recording it.

Part of the reason was the fact it sounded somewhat interesting. However, I ended up doing this mostly because I recognized Danny Trejo from several other movies my wife and I have watched and Charisma Carpenter from the few Buffy the Vampire Slayer Episodes I’ve seen. Unfortunately, even though it had some familiar faces, the movie ended up being kind of lame.

I had a couple major complaints about this particular film. The first was the fact this movie, much like many other from this genre, was very predictable. It wasn’t hard to figure out how the former head master (Gainey) would get released and, once he was, it wasn’t overly difficult to figure out who would be killed, what order they would be killed in and, ultimately, how the grandson (Baron) would save the day.

Another thing that I found was disappointing was the way the movie pretty much wasted the two most recognizable names on the cast list. Carpenter’s character, the librarian, had maybe two minutes in the film before she was killed (though, admittedly, I liked her death scene) and Trejo’s character, the janitor Ortiz, spent a good chunk of the film locked up in a closet and, even once he was released, really had a limited role in this movie.

To be fair, Baron and some of the lesser-known actors did an OK job. However, this movie was definitely lacking something and, while I’m not sure Trejo and Carpenter would have improved it dramatically if given a chance, it would have been nice to have at least seen them get the opportunity to.

It’s an OK movie but, as I mentioned, does lack something. It might be worth watching once if you come across it on TV and can’t find anything else. But, it’s not a movie that I would recommend going out of your way to watch.

My Grade: C