20130926: Horror Review--Tamara

Tamara

1. Production Fundamentals; reception
1. Canadian live action feature length film released in 2005, rated R, 98 minutes, horror, fantasy, thriller.
2. IMDB: 5.0/10.0 from 6,481 users; estimated budget, 3.5 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 32% on the meter; 38% liked it from 93,981 audience ratings.
4. Directed by Jeremy Haft; screenplay by Jeffrey Reddick.
5. Starring: Jenna Dewan as Tamera Riley, Katy Stuart as Chloe, Chad Faust as Jesse, Bryan Clark as Shawn, Gil Hacohen as Patrick, Melissa Elias as Kisha, Matthew Marsden as Mr. Bill Natolly, Claudette Mink as Alison Natolly.
6. Seen streaming on Hulu+; had commercials.


2. Setup, Plot
1. Opens with witchcraft paraphernalia (from various eras and regions) with someone handling the objects.  Segue to a late teen girl (Tamara) seducing a tall handsome teacher (Bill Natolly), only to be discovered.  It was a daydream in class, but an important one.


2. The Natolly likes Tamara, but as a good writer.  She gets razzed for everything: successes, failures, the books she carries.  She writes an article for the school paper in favor of drug testing, and that brings out a lot of resentment, even though the testing was going to happen anyway.  The jocks (Shawn and Patrick) and their cheerleader friend Kisha are the worst.


3. The 'cool' kids construct a prank to make Tamara think Natolly wants to meet her for a tryst at a motel, but nothing could be further from the truth.  Alison Natolly thinks she is pregnant, and she and Bill are extra pleased with each other.


4. Tamara's father is a demanding jackass who belittles the mother who abandoned them; this makes things worse.  Tamara casts a spell to make Natolly love her; she's unaware of the planned prank. She can't complete the bloodletting part of the spell.


5. She gets a badly filtered telephone call from someone representing themselves as Natolly.  She promises to meet him; the prank is on.  They trick Tamara into stripping while they film from the next motel room.  "You look like a cheap ugly whore," says Shawn.  "Welcome to reality TV!"


6. The jocks (Shawn and Patrick) get her in a headlock and try to get her to quit thrashing around.  Tall, buffed, 200 pound jocks (plural) versus one 90 pound non-athletic girl who reads.  Right.  They throw her into some furniture resulting in a fatal wound.  "It was an accident," and "I'm not throwing my life away because of this loser," show the acceptance of responsibility by the jocks.


7. Accident?  This was murder by entitled self-regarding scum.  One needs to see that for the revenge part to be the least bit justified.


8. The six of them (Shawn, Patrick, Kisha, Roger, Jesse, Chloe) bury her in the woods.  There's a disconnected dream sequence.


9. Tamara revives (logic jump here) and wakes up in her own bed (deleted time there).  She goes back to school dressed as a vamp, to the surprise and shock of the crew who attacked her.  She sets about using magic to get revenge.


10. Tamara encourages Roger (the AV guy) to finish his failed suicide of years before.


11. Tamara visits Natolly.  She tries and fails to seduce him.  Next day, Tamara visits Alison Natolly, the school guidance counselor.  She starts psychological war against Alison.


12. Tamara casts a spell on her father to make him eat the beer bottles he had been drinking from.


13. There's a big party coming up (rich kid's parents out of town).  The perpetrators decide not to let Tamara be a downer for them.  Tamara crashes the party and puts a spell on Shawn and Patrick.  Using demonic domination, she gets them to have sex.  Kisha discovers the two of them in bed.  Tamara puts a spell on her as well, to eat uncontrollably.


14. Jesse and Chloe contact Natolly to try to end the madness.  They discover Mr. Riley bleeding and about to die.  They also discover the spell that Tamara is using.  It requires the blood of the user be spilled (done) and allows the user to control others through touch.


15. Patrick and Shawn try to kill Alison, who retaliates with a screwdriver to Patrick's neck.  Bill's call to the cops worked.


16. At the hospital, Kisha stabs Jesse fatally and beats up Chloe.


17. Bill and Chloe confront Tamara.


18. The ending sets up a sequel.  Please, no.  This first installment had no heroes, no actors, no dramatic tension; it does have failures of logic, continuity, and SFX.


3. Conclusions
1. Little meaningful adult supervision.
2. One line summary: Please, no sequel to this rotten teen revenge mess.
3. Two stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 A little grainy.


2. Sound: 8/10 OK, but not great.


3. Acting: 3/10  Twenty-somethings as teenagers were not very believable.  Jenna Dewan was particularly poor.  Bryan Clark, Gil Hacohen, and Matthew Madsen were ridiculously bad.


4. Screenplay: 6/10 This is a film about teenagers with wobbly to broken moral compasses, and next to no oversight.  Police were on camera for about half a minute, and they did not arrest the obvious suspect of a murder.  Some of the logic breakage was painful.  The hospital is supposed to be a working one, but is next to empty, which working hospitals never are.


5. Special Effects: 3/10 Sad. The glass and blood on Mr. Riley were not credible. Kisha barfs up her guts during multiple heaves; a few seconds later, the same stretch of floor is completely clean.  Roger's on camera suicide was poorly done.  The 'worms in the arm' part was not believable at all.