Troy Escamilla | Through the Shattered Lens

2020’s Teacher’s Shortage starts off with a genuinely disturbing suicide scene.

In a high school classroom, the teacher hands out the yearbooks. Everyone, including the teacher, has a good laugh when they see that one of their classmates has been labeled an “ugly skank,” in her class photo. The only person who doesn’t laugh is the victim of the prank. She runs from the classroom, hides in a bathroom stall, and eventually smashes a mirror and slits her wrists.

It’s disturbing because this is something that actually does happen. This is especially true in the age of social media, when it’s so important to fit in and say the right thing and have a certain number of people following you and liking whatever it is that you’re offering up. With the rise of AI and the increase of people stupid enough to fall for AI, this is something that is only going to get worse. In our efforts to create a better and more connected world, we’ve actually created a world where there’s even more incentive to be a bully.

The rest of the film never quite duplicates the power of its opening. It’s a slasher film in which the killer is tracking down and murdering teachers from the high school. The film was directed by Troy Escamilla, who also did Party Night. Party Night was a not-bad homage to the slasher films of the 80s. The main thing that made Party Night work was Escamilla’s obvious love for the genre and it should be noted that the kills in Teacher Shortage are effectively done. I could have done without the red-tint that the film uses whenever the killer attacks but I can understand what Escamilla was going for. In those scenes, his love for the genre comes through.

Unfortunately, the non-kill scenes are extremely slow. I have no doubt that the film is accurate in its portrayal of burned-out veteran teachers and overly earnest rookies but, whenever there’s any scene featuring more than three or four lines of dialogue, the viewer will probably find themselves checking the clock. This is one of those films that felt far longer than its 86 minutes, largely because the editing (with the exception of the kill scenes) was so poorly realized that every scene just seemed to drag on for an eternity.

The other problem with the film is that I wasn’t particularly shocked by the identity of the killer. In the best giallo tradition, Escamilla attempts to generate some suspense about who is actually underneath the killer’s mask but it’s not hard to figure out. By process of elimination, it’s easy to note who is accounted for and who isn’t during each kill. There was really only one suspect. I guessed the killer after about 15 minutes of watching and I was hoping that I was wrong. I was hoping there would be some sort of out-of-nowhere, totally bonkers twist that wouldn’t make any sense but which would at least add some life to the movie. Unfortunately, there was not.

For horror fans, there’s a lot of blood and there’s also Brinke Stevens. That said, there’s not a lot of suspense. This is ultimately a pretty forgettable slasher film.

It’s prom night!

Except these students aren’t going to prom. Instead, they’re going to have a party all their own. They’re heading out to a house with quite a history, the perfect place to have a night that they’ll never forget. And a night that they’ll be lucky to …. SURVIVE!

There. Was that cheesy enough?

If my introduction was a bit over-the-top, it fits the general mood of 2017’s Party Night. Party Night is a deliberate throwback to the slasher films of the 80s and the early 90s, before the genre started to take itself a bit too seriously. (The worse thing that ever happened to the slasher genre is that a few of the films started to get positive reviews from critics who praised them for being subversive. The end result of all that was David Gordon Green changing Michael Myers from a nightmarish boogeyman to just another buffoon living in a sewer.) As such, Party Night is a film where a bunch of attractive young people go to a place that common sense say they shouldn’t go to. And then they proceed to the dumbest things possible, like wander off by themselves. The joy of the film comes from yelling at the screen, “Don’t do that, you idiot!” and then discovering that you were right to warn them not to do what they did.

I’ve made this point before but it is worth repeating. The common complaint with most old school slasher films is that they feature characters who do stupid things. That’s a valid comment but, to be honest, most people are pretty stupid. And when you’re a teenager and it’s prom night and you’re hanging out with your best friends, you’re going to be even more stupid than usual. In my case, when I sit there and roll my eyes at the girl in a slasher movie who wanders around outside in her underwear in the middle of the night, it’s because I’m trying to forget about all the times that I’ve walked up and down the alley in my sleepshirt, socks, and bathrobe while looking for the cat at two in the morning. The fact of the matter is that we all do stupid things. Some people do stupid things because they’re stupid. Some people do stupid things because it’s just easier and takes less effort. (In my case, it was more convenient to just throw on a bathrobe before I went out to look for the cat as opposed to actually taking the time to put on …. well, clothes.) We recognize our stupidity in the characters who populate the slasher films of the 70s and 80s. And the reason why so many people instinctively make fun of those films is because they know they would not survive an old school slasher film. Myself, I’d probably be dead within the first fifteen minutes.

As for Party Night, it’s a low-budget film with a simple plot and an enthusiastic cast and an obvious love for the genre. Fans of old school slasher films will appreciate the way the story pays homage to the films of the past. It’s a film that understands that, at a certain age, everyone’s too stupid to survive a horror movie.