Would You Just Shut Up?!: School Killer (2001)

School Killer (El Vigilante) (Spain, 2001)
Rating:*1/2
Starring: Paul Naschy, Carlos Fuentes and Zoe Berriatúa

With a title as plain and lazy as School Killer, it could have been two things: a diamond in the rough or as plain as a sheet of drawing paper. Luckily, it wasn't as plain as paper. Nor was it a diamond in the rough, sadly. No. No. It's something worse: ambitious. Like, you know that awful disappointing feeling when what should be a fun movie is butchered by over ambitiousness? Well, this is one of them. 

School Killer is about a group of six ghost hunting teens who go inside an abandoned campus trying to snoop around to see the supernatural. Then comes the usual parts of a school haunting such as weird people dancing in the buildings, lights that turn on by themselves, a creepy looking security guard appearing now and then, as well as visions of people getting slaughtered.

It turns out that some 20 years ago, another group of six teens decided to crash the place and party (ho-hum, again?), but what they didn't know was that there's a deranged night guard lurking around the school, armed with a hunting knife and a fire axe. Now it seems this guy's at it again at the present, as today's set of doomed thespians will soon find out.

As a slasher, we only get to be treated with a good bodycount action around the middle film as before and after that, School Killer (2001) plays out more as a ghost flick with kids trying to figure out the reason behind the hauntings, which is very convulsed and jarring. The problem here is that the film simply talks too much, with characters trying so hard openly explaining whether the homicidal watchman is alive or dead, as well as piece together what really happened at that night which, in the end, wouldn't even matter at all. To top all confusion, we even have a Sixth Sense (1999)-style twist ending that fails to make this film any better than what an ordinary slasher could've offered and instead ruined it. 

There are kills, yes, good ones, but those are the ones around the flashbacks and by the time the story shifts back to the present, the kills go tame and lame, as if pushed back to favor the paranormal spook fest. With so much talking and boring walk scenes, the only thing that redeems this movie is that apparently the lead killer's played by veteran Spanish genre actor Paul Naschy, known for his werewolf roles during the years 70s and 80s, whose performance as a deranged night guard outshines the annoying teenagers.

I'm probably going all through this the wrong way but, dammit, I really hate it when something that should have been so simple has to go through something so overly complicated just to be executed. Why blast a can open with a shotgun to get the yummy corned beef inside if you could just use the can opener next to you? School Killer (2001) did just that. It blown open a big hole that just wouldn't shut up and get killed...

Bodycount:
1 female found slaughtered
1 female repeatedly bludgeoned against bathroom stalls, drowned in toilet
1 male knifed on the neck
1 female knifed on the gut
1 female had her chest sliced open with knife
1 male decapitated with hatchet
1 male gets a hatchet to the head
1 female falls to her death
1 male found impaled with a pole
2 males and 1 female presumably killed
Total: 12