wes-connors High school senior Jonathan Baron (as Quentin Smith) agrees to help a history teacher in the boiler room. They drop some mystical gold coins Mr. Baron inherited from his grandfather, which causes the old man's spirit to appear. Ghostly grandfather M.C. Gainey (as Lionel Danforth) causes earthquakes in the New England private school. Baron's girlfriend Lauren Pennington (as Whitney Douglas) starts seeing things. People get slaughtered - in very violent ways. Wizened janitor Danny Trejo (as Ortiz) joins the students in battling Mr. Gainey...In featured roles, thin Marc Donato (as Colt) and thick Shawn Phillips (as Blake) overextend their years in high school. Sexy librarian Charisma Carpenter is seen briefly. The opening credit sequence is a highlight, but the accompanying song - a re-write of Chuck Berry's "No Particular Place to Go" - could stir the rock 'n' roll star's once protective lawyers into action. The special effects aren't too bad, for this sort of thing. However, the TV Movie earns a failing grade as director Jeffery Scott Lando and his crew can't turn the effects into an engaging story.*** Haunted High (8/25/12) Jeffery Scott Lando ~ Jonathan Baron, Lauren Pennington, M.C. Gainey, Danny Trejo

hi_im_manic I had expected a low-budget made-for-TV SyFy feature, this is why I'll generously award this campy feature 3 stars. One simply cannot watch a movie like this and expect a high quality production, however viewers deserve to not face-palm themselves every 4 minutes."Low budget", as most of us cinemaphiles know, is not a valid excuse for bad writing, bad acting, and... bad everything. The plot is like cheap fishnet stockings... covered with holes, transparent, and weak. Sadly, not as attractive. Some of the scenes are so illogical it's frustrating. A better screenplay, set and directing would have lent this mess some respectability because the concept itself is very intriguing. It's a good idea with potential, gone wrong. There are some unique kills, and I wasn't really distracted by overly bad CGI like in some comparable productions. I was too distracted by poorer qualities, I suppose. The dialog is so bad, it exceeds description. The bad puns tossed out by our antagonist before each kill were insufferable. Even if they were aiming to be campy, it still failed. I've seen better acting at middle school Thanksgiving pageants. The worst performance (arguably) was offered by Shawn C. Philips. He's no stranger to the horror genre. Perhaps he just did the best he could with the material he had? It's all terrible waste of several proved talents. Please do not judge the actors exclusively by this feature if you happen to be unfamiliar with their other work. If you're a fan of other Sy-Fy channel movies and are prepared for their usual shortcomings, you may not be disappointed. Admittedly, this is not their worst work nor their best.

dien I think that my summary line says it all - this movie had potential. Unfortunately it faced the same obstacle many previous SciFi Originals had faced before. Insufficient funding. How are we supposed to believe the story takes place in a big school, when we only see one class of about 15 people? And the external and internal shots don't seem to match? A bigger building with more actors would have made this more believable.As for the story, there are too many things unexplained. Some are hinted at (like the student-teacher relationship between a female student and her music teacher), but they are not resolved. What was 'the cult' all about? What was the director's main goal (apart from aimlessly killing all the students and staff).The thing that bugged me the most was Charisma Carpenter. She was in the film for only two minutes and then got killed off. What the heck? Why not have her as a helpful librarian who knows stuff about the occult.Even with all those faults this was a rather enjoyable film. If you can catch it on TV and you like some mild jump scares, then I can recommend it.

GL84 After becoming stranded in a high school, a group of students find the cause to be a reawakened spirit of a demonic headmaster and his minions, forcing them to battle the deadly spirits to get away alive.This here turned out to be one of the more impressive and enjoyable Sci- Fi Channel original films. One of the more impressive elements here is the rather nice suspense displayed, which comes from the exceptional use of the creepy-looking school location throughout here with its endless corridors and hallways littered with lockers and others that showcase the locations of the school after dark which comes off incredibly well. Those are furthered by the film's best aspect as the early actions of them trapped inside as these are strongly built-up using the concept of the earthquakes, strange remarks of the ghosts on the PA system as well as the gradual realization of them being stuck here in rather nefarious set-ups which make the burgeoning mystery a lot more chilling than expected. As those are combined with their tormenting the students and faculty throughout with all manners of tactics including reanimation of dead bodies, hallucinations of every kind from the twisting of reality to keeping them at odds with reality and mind tricks comes together for a strong series of scenes here featuring the attack by the demon in the locker-room shower, the great sequence in the science lab of the frogs running amuck or the general teases here of turning the floors of the hallways into glue, disappearing and vanishing again during an attack or just generally teasing and toying with them for the sheer fun of it all which is where this one comes off as fun as it does. These scenes do have a rather cheesy and goofy tone and feel throughout here for the majority of it's scenes by keeping the action going along nicely, and when combined with the nice gore from the high body-count make for a great time overall. There's only a few small problems here, most of which come from the ending's fantasy-derived solution, as it's just way too overblown and goofy against the more intense sections elsewhere in here with the ghosts displaying energy weapons, supernatural powers and much more, turning it into an overall goofy tone that goes against the rest of the film quite obviously. as well, the atrocious CGI and rather lame story that never makes any sense do drive this down somewhat, as a whole this was quite a bit of fun.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language and Brief Nudity