As we continue with this series of Back to School reviews (only 11 left to go!), we now go from Degrassi to something much, much darker.  A horror thriller from 2010, The Final takes a look at what happens when a bunch of teenage outcasts decide to get revenge on the students who have spent the past few years tormenting them.

And let’s just say that revenge is not pretty.

One day, a bunch of affluent high school students all receive an invitation to a costume party that will be held at an isolated and long-deserted mansion.  These students are your typical collection of jocks and cheerleaders.  They’re popular but they’re not exactly smart, which may explain why they all show up for the party and drink from a punch bowl that’s been laced with a drug.  Everyone falls unconscious and, when they wake up, they discover that they have all been chained together.

Among the prisoners is one uninvited guest.  Kurtis (Jascha Washington) is one of the popular kids but he wasn’t invited to the party.  Why?  Well, as we see at the beginning of the film, Kurtis is literally the only nice guy at the entire school.  He’s the only popular kid who is willing to treat the school’s “outcasts” with kindness.

And, as you’ve probably guessed already, the outcasts are the ones who set up the party.  As they announce to their prisoners, they are going to spend the rest of the night torturing them.  They’re not planning on killing anyone.  Instead, they just want to ruin everyone’s perfect future.  They didn’t want to torture Kurtis but then he decided to come to the party.

Seriously, what can you do?

The rest of the film is basically a combination of nonstop torture and talk.  The prisoners spend a lot of time begging and screaming.  Significantly, they don’t do much apologizing.  In fact, a few of them continue to try to act like bullies even though they’re in chains.  As for the outcasts, their leader proves to be surprisingly talkative.  In fact, there were a few times when I really wanted him to shut up.  Why are movie torturers always so verbose?

That said, it quickly becomes obvious that some of the outcasts are more enthusiastic than others.  And their leader, Dane, is quickly revealed to be so crazy that he’s just as willing to kill his friends as he is to torture his bullies.  Dane is played by an actor named Marc Donato.  Interestingly enough, before making The Final, Donato was best known for playing a bully on Degrassi.  And before getting his role on Degrassi, Donato had a tiny but important role as a bullied child in a terrible film called Pay It Forward.  So, when it comes cinematic bullying, Donato has seen every possible angle.

The Final is really an unpleasant film, though I imagine it was meant to make the audience uncomfortable.  I love horror films but I tend to get bored pretty quickly with films where the majority of the running time is taken up with people being tortured.  There’s only so many times you can listen to someone scream in pain before you tune out.  That said, The Final is also a well-made and atmospherically creepy film and all the popular kids are so unlikable that you really don’t mind seeing them lose limbs and get disfigured.  Considering that we’re still hearing daily stories about children being bullied to the point of suicide, maybe The Final should be required viewing in certain classrooms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG44eWPNHuk