DOWN A DARK HALL (2018)

Studio:       Lionsgate
Director:    Rodrigo Cortes
Writer:       Mike Goldbach, Chris Sparling
Producer:  Stephenie Meyer, Wyck Godfrey, Marty Bowen, Meghan Hibbett, Adrian Guerra
Stars:     AnnaSophia Robb, Isabelle Fuhrman, Victoria Moroles, Noah Silver, Taylor Russell, Rosie Day, Rebecca Front, Jodhi May, Pip Torrens, Uma Thurman

Review Score:

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Summary:

Troubled teen girls uncover a startling connection between their mysterious boarding school and the ghosts of gifted artists.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Ginny Gordy-Dabrowski and her second husband Dave Dabrowski send Ginny’s troubled teen daughter Katherine ‘Kit’ Gordy to Blackwood Boarding School. Odd headmistress Madame Duret and stern housekeeper Miss Olonsky greet Kit upon her arrival. Kit notices an ominous door at the end of a dark hallway, which Madame Duret identifies as being off limits.

Fellow troublesome teens Ashley, Izzy, Sierra, and Veronica, who soon begins having regular run-ins with Kit, arrive at the school. Madame Duret confiscates everyone’s cellphones as she explains that although her rules are harsh, she aims to ensure each hand-selected student realizes her full potential. Miss Olonsky begins administering nightly medication to each girl.

The girls meet mathematics teacher Professor Farley, literature instructor Dr. Heather Sinclair, and music teacher Jules, who is also Madame Duret’s attractive son. Madame Duret doubles as the school’s art instructor. As the girls go about their daily studies, Ashley quickly becomes an impressive poet, Sierra becomes extraordinarily adept at art, and Izzy excels at math.

Kit begins exhibiting exceptional skill on the piano. During a private lesson, Kit confides in Jules about her father and the trauma she has suffered since his death when she was a child. Kit has a strange experience where she blacks out while outdoors and abruptly reappears inside in the music study.

Ashley startles the other girls when she has a vision of a woman named Elizabeth, whom she claims is the person who brings her the words that she writes. Kit sees a shadowy figure of a man in the hallway outside Ashley’s room, prompting all of the girls to sleep together that night. Kit speaks about her father again while the other girls ponder why they were chosen for Blackwood.

The next day, Kit tells Madame Duret what she and the other girls saw. Madame Duret passes off the visions as a side effect of their pills, which she says they will no longer be given.

All of the girls except for Veronica continue excelling in their respective disciplines. Madame Duret chides her son after interrupting a romantic moment between Jules and Kit.

Kit notices that Sierra’s artwork includes the initials T.C. just like several paintings in Madame Duret’s study. Ashley claims she feels as though someone takes over her body when she writes. After doing research in the school’s library, Kit concludes that dead painter Thomas Cole inexplicably possesses Sierra while poet Elizabeth Webb possesses Ashley and composer William Kessler possesses Kit when she plays piano.

Kit experiences a vision of flying bats crashing through a window. Kit also runs from several ghostly figures, which Veronica sees too.

Kit and Veronica decide to investigate the room at the end of the dark hall. Inside, they find files revealing that numerous other girls previously experienced similar possessions before being driven to suicide. Madame Duret and Miss Olonsky capture Veronica while Kit flees.

Kit experiences a vision of the building violently shaking. Afterward, Kit becomes drawn toward a vision of ghosts assembled around William Kessler at a piano. With Madame Duret and the Blackwood instructors encouraging her, Kit takes over for Kessler. A bright light envelops the chamber as Kit plays.

A disfigured ghost demanding that his music be played shakes Kit from her vision. Kit finds herself in the music study with Jules and demands to know what is happening.

Kit summons all of the students and teachers to the main foyer. Madame Duret explains that the girls have the gift of being vessels by which they can channel geniuses who died too young and thus complete their work. Madame Duret promises that Kit can connect with her father if she chooses to continue.

Kit finds Ashley trying to slit her wrists. Ashley later jumps from her window and dies after crashing through the greenhouse’s glass roof.

Jules helps Kit by giving her keys to unlock the cabinet containing the confiscated cellphones. Kit calls 911.

Kit finds Sierra dead. Kit also finds Izzy entranced by a mathematical equation and tries snapping her back to reality.

Kit confronts Madame Duret and her instructors to tell them she called the police. Madame Duret expresses anger that Jules betrayed her for Kit. Miss Olonsky captures Kit.

Miss Olonsky locks Kit in a room where Kit finds Veronica demonically possessed and chained inside a circle of candles. As ghosts assemble around them, Kit encourages Veronica to fight against her possession. Veronica regains her own mind and is freed, but a candle gets knocked over in the process.

Izzy unlocks the door for Kit and Veronica as the building begins going up in flames. Still entranced, Izzy insists on staying behind and burns to death.

Kit and Veronica find Miss Olonsky preparing to kill Jules when Dr. Sinclair unexpectedly knocks Miss Olonsky to the ground. Dr. Sinclair remains behind and becomes overwhelmed by ghosts as Kit and Veronica flee with Jules.

Ghosts confront Madame Duret. Madame Duret inadvertently stabs Professor Farley as the ghosts swarm her.

Miss Olonsky recovers and sees a vision of her dead son Michael, which is what she wanted when she agreed to work for Madame Duret. Miss Olonsky follows the ghost to the greenhouse where she dies in a sudden explosion.

Kit follows a vision of her father that ultimately leads Veronica safely outside. Kit and Jules remain in the foyer where they see flames consume Madame Duret. Jules sacrifices himself to save Kit from a falling beam.

Kit collapses outside as police and paramedics arrive and the building becomes completely engulfed. Kit’s mom rides with Kit in an ambulance. While unconscious, Kit gets closure with her father’s ghost in a final encounter before returning to life.

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Review:

Kit typifies a rebellious movie teen.  A nose ring, smoky eye makeup, and smart aleck quips externalize the inner aftershocks still rippling since the death of her dad when she was a child.  Actress AnnaSophia Robb certainly puffs in as much personality as Kit’s scowling pout can handle.  “Down a Dark Hall” nonetheless forges its emotional anchor from evergreen ores.

Madame Duret on the other hand, doesn’t entirely overeat from the table of harsh headmistress habits like stiff posture, puckered cheeks, or the sternness of a knuckle-rapping stick.  She doesn’t have to, since ominous housekeeper Miss Olonsky fills the function of dirty deed doer.  Duret paints only one of her sides as a dour disciplinarian while the other smilingly assures students that their full creative potential will finally be empowered.  Uma Thurman deliciously chews on Duret’s dual-layered characterization with evident relish, employing a French accent so curious, I can’t decide if it’s distractingly campy or expertly executed for effect.

To the detriment of their restricted capacity for soliciting audience empathy, the bad girls of Blackwood Boarding School who aren’t Kit occupy interchangeable identities.  Kit’s four classmates arrive in a slow-motion montage set to a trendy-sounding song, unpack attitudinal angst, then leave individuality in their luggage, with Veronica’s cigarette-smoking penchant for violent confrontation making her the sole noisemaker.  The other three, characters and actresses alike, skate by largely unrecognized.

Exposition lays out stops for the story’s upcoming route.  Foreshadowing features the confiscation of cellphones in conspicuous cutaways, dialogue about it being “entirely possible to reach the nearest town” despite the grandly Gothic building’s remote location, and oh, an eye-catching door at the end of an unlit corridor Madame Duret enticingly teases as being “off limits to the students.”

That door of course plays a key role in a supernatural secret regarding Blackwood’s syllabus.  Tutored by teachers dedicated to separate disciplines, each girl strangely starts excelling at a single subject, eerily echoing attributes of long-dead scholars and artists.

Kit lucks out by scoring Madame Duret’s alluring son Jules as her very hands-on instructor.  Equaling Jules in dreaminess is the cinematography of sunlit windows swallowing the pair in circular camera sweeps as Jules’ arms envelop Kit’s while playing piano in tandem.  Exceeding Kit’s sudden ivory-tickling skills in inexplicability is the swiftness with which the duo’s lukewarm romance blooms in time to turn a critical plot point.

“Twilight” creator Stephenie Meyer co-produced “Down a Dark Hall” from a screenplay based on a book by Lois Duncan, who also wrote the novel “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”  Those two names offer fair indicators of this film’s tamer thriller tone, although “Down a Dark Hall” leans even closer to the PG end of PG-13 than the movies made from those other two titles.  Influential flashes of “The Craft” can be seen in the students, “Harry Potter” in Blackwood’s odd architecture, and any number of quiet European chillers in the mood (take your pick from “The Woman in Black 2,” “The Orphanage,” “The Lodgers” (review here), etc.).

More of an indifferent nibble on Netflix than a specifically sought after rental, “Down a Dark Hall’s” plainly straightforward nature earns it a median grade of three stars out of five.  Add a star if you’re in the target teen demographic for which its taste is tailored.  Take at least one away if you errantly gear up for a mature mystery or straight shot of pure horror.

Several peculiarities chafe technical edges, such as excessive insect chittering all over the audio, even (especially) during indoor exchanges.  Standardized scenes involving predictable revelations don’t do the film any favors either.

For the most part, “Down a Dark Hall” gets enough gas out of adequate atmosphere and performances to maintain a safe speed for copacetic intrigue and entertainment.  “Down a Dark Hall” doesn’t try any harder than necessary, which turns out to be okay considering its inoffensive intentions of serving up slumber party spooks and soapy young adult drama.  

NOTE: There is a brief post-credits scene.

Review Score:  60

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