Seance Review (Film, 2021) #31DaysOfHorror
content warning: death by suicide, blood, gore, bullying, ableism, violence against children, drug use
At Edelvine Academy, an all-girls boarding school, an urban legend exists about the Edelvine Ghost. She was a former student who died by suicide in the school’s bathroom. The students believe that if you call for her at 3:13AM, she comes back. A prank surrounding the legend goes horribly wrong, leading to a student’s death. New student Camille arrives shortly after to a school still shaken by death and suspicion.
Seance is a school horror/ghost story/paranormal slasher from writer/director Simon Barrett. It shifts between the styles as the story goes on. This is a particularly aggressive ghost story, playing with the bullying dynamic of a highly competitive school to cover for the haunting. This is that particularly modern sensibility for the genre, where the evidence for and against the presence of a vengeful spirit feels pretty even.
Barrett plays with different camera lenses and angles to create a constant sense of disorientation. It’s an eerie effect that builds a lot of tension. Electricity also fails all the time, with lights flickering throughout. There’s even some really clever play with the soundtrack to match different appliances failing. The film feels almost unhinged, like it’s about to fall apart at any second.
For me, I actually felt motion sickness from the effect. Specifically, the panning shots with a fisheye lens. This is on the level of the final moments of The Blair Witch Project or the action scenes in Cloverfield.
Seance shifts into paranormal slasher territory going into the second act. The core group of girls is being targeted by something. This includes the girls involved in the original ritual, new student Camille, and the dead student’s friend Helina. They are not the most likable cast of characters, but they start to work together when a second ritual—the titular séance—goes unexpectedly right. That friend group likes pulling pranks surrounding the ghosts in the school and they may have actually invoked a real spirit for once.
The screenplay for Seance is rock solid. Barrett crafts a great modern ghost story in a boarding school. It’s a well-worn trope at this point. This feels more like Jawbreaker or The Craft in its approach to the teenage characters, with the potential haunting replacing the accidental murder or witchcraft. The girls have to operate in secret around a full school, though this particular school is far more exclusive and small. One death knocks out a significant percentage of the population; two is an absolute crisis for an elite school that pushes anyone into self-defense mode.
Seance is streaming on Shudder.
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