Years ago, Lionel Danforth (M.C. Gainey) was
the head minister at East Poly Prep Private School but as a
side hustle he started a cult which basically ended up with a
bunch of his students being slaughtered to death. Not
that this is going to stop his portrait from majestically
hanging on the walls of East Poly Prep. What is up with
that? Fortunately Danforth and his evil ways were killed
off all those years ago, but unfortunately he is now
reanimated in a SyFy original movie named 'Haunted High' or
'Ghost Quake'… I can't remember which one they called
it. But at this point does it really matter what they
call this stuff?
Anyway, Quentin (Jonathan Baron) is a high school student at
East Poly about to turn eighteen in a day and he's a little
weird. Still, Whitney as played by actress Lauren
Pennington whom the filmmakers stuffed into a schoolgirl
outfit digs this weirdo for whatever reason and we will roll
with this. Thing is that young Quentin is hiding a
secret and his history teacher Mr. Myers (Ricky Wayne) knows
this secret. We were a little concerned what kind of
movie we were about to watch when Mr. Myers lured young
Quentin down to the boiler room, but thankfully he just wanted
to let him know that he knows that he's Lionel Danforth's
grandson. And he wanted to see the evil gold coins that
he inherited for his birthday. Coins Quentin dropped
which made the school go all earthquake like and freed some
ghosts. Call it a Ghost Quake if you will, which makes
this High School Haunted.
Right now however the kids are unaware of the ghosts, the few
that stayed late for homecoming set design, rock band practice
as led by the legendary Griff Furst or those kids that broke
into the school to hack the computer and give themselves
A+'s. Soon,
however, they will all be keenly aware of the
ghosts considering Lionel Danforth is running though the
halls, cracking one-liners, cackling maniacally and killing
everybody he sees. He also has a razortoothed sidekick
in his pet demon acolyte (Misty Marshall) who is handling his
dirty work.
The good thing for these kids is that they have Ortiz the
Janitor (Danny Trejo) on their side and he's been studying the
Book of Evil. Admittedly from what we've seen he's been
studying it badly, but at least he's giving it shot. His
dead sister Marisol (Amanda Phillips) has been trying to help
out as well, but she sucks too.
All Danforth really wants, outside of turning annoying high
school students and support staff into bloody goo, is for his
grandson to love him and accept his legacy as a demon
conduit. For some reason the kid isn't down with this
program, mainly because he's all in love and stuff with his
hopeful future girlfriend wedged in that schoolgirl
outift. Ho-hum mundanity shall ensue.
As far as the title is concerned, 'Haunted High' is a little
mundane and while 'Ghost Quake' is better, it is stupid so
choose which ever one you like the best. The movie
itself, directed by Jeffrey Scott Lando who has helmed a few
of these things, while not the worst Sci-Fi Original it was
still a fairly run of the mill, mundane, kind of tired
affair. It is a good thing that SyFy has apparently
graduated from the dark days of 'Raptor Island' and 'Project
Viper' but because of the new focus on semi-competency we
rarely get the occasional diamond in the rough like
'Mansquito' or 'Abominable'. That's a little sad.
But it's not like 'Haunted High' is awful though. It was
competently acted by most of the cast, though we did believe
that M.C. Rainey's school themed one-liners where getting
annoying. Every time a punk that was about to die really
didn't require a 'death demerit' or 'death detention' or
'report to the death office' or whatever the hell he had to
say. And if at any time he wanted to stop cackling, we
wouldn't have been mad at him. The effects were better
than average, and there was some inventiveness in killing
these annoying people which avoided a lot of the outright
gore, keeping things TV palatable since it looked like we had
lots of FX techs off screen throwing red goo at nearby walls
as we cut away from the various dismemberments and head
explosions. And the reanimated zombie formaldehyde frogs
were pretty darned funny. There was also a
Charisma Carpenter sighting who had brief cameo as the school
librarian, note that we've never seen a librarian look quite
like this, and it looked as if she was only in this movie
because she agreed to be poured into an inappropriate bookish
dame suit that was two sizes too small.
Outstanding.
Everything else, particularly the story we were being told was
just kind of blah and Lando's direction was probably a little
too laid back. There just wasn't an awful lot of
excitement in this one, despite the plethora of killing and
murderization which theoretically should've given 'Ghostquake'
more of a pulse.
Not the worst Sci-Fi Original we've seen, not even close, but
when I want to watch semi-competent reasonably well made run
of the mill movies, I'll watch Lifetime. Bring
back the risky days when we didn't know what the hell we were
going to get on alternating Saturday nights, but we knew it
would leave a mark. Or a scar I guess would be more
accurate.
