While I successfully slogged through four years of college, higher education can be a real horror show. The daunting task of leaving home and living on your own or worse, with a roommate, is scary enough without the guarantee of challenging classes, impossible professors, and wishy washy new friends. Going to college offers the promise of new beginnings and broader horizons, but what happens when we venture off into the unknown and find that our academic anxieties are worse than we thought? Every intellectual and psychological fear of school is realized in Abie Sidell’s film CRAM, which recently made its world premiere at Austin Film Festival.
CRAM introduces us to struggling college student Marc (John DiMino) who, in order to save his grade, plans to cram and write his final paper at the school library one fateful night. Unfortunately for Marc, what awaits him in the dark corridors of the library is not a productive sanctuary, but instead an undiscovered corner of hell. This film plays on nearly every fear related to the college experience: isolation, scantrons, pulling all-nighters, being in a library late at night, and the terrifying reality that should you not perform to your school’s standards, your future could be at stake. Though Marc at first tries to negotiate with a friend to copy their paper, he eventually puts forth a concerted effort to get all of his work done — that is, until the whispers begin and the books start jumping from their shelves.
Sidell’s direction is meticulous, and every hallway and crevice of this library is utilized with terrifying precision. Studying alone in the library late at night can conjure up all manner of frightening scenarios, and yet CRAM found innovative ways to take advantage of this sepulchral setting with clever camerawork and imaginative scares. There are times where the film goes a bit off the rails and it pays off — like when Marc attempts to escape and ends up in a vision of the party he bailed on to finish his work, and finds that his friends are unwilling and generally uninterested to hear about his problems. This sensation is all-too-familiar, and when Marc realizes that he is truly alone, is perhaps the scariest moment in the film. There are other instances, where the film treads off of the beaten path and swerves into some grandiose grotesqueness that was more distracting than disturbing.
Even still, CRAM finds interesting avenues of fear to travel down, exploring not just themes of schoolyard terror, but some poignant messaging surrounding mental health, and how the arduousness of academia can tear you down. While not every horror investigated in CRAM was entirely effective, the practical effects and lighting helped cultivate a creepy vibe and added some notable moments of tension to an already chilling premise. Decently scary, decidedly unique, and yet unsettlingly relatable, CRAM is a college horror story worth your watch — at the very least to remind you that there is, indeed, a fate worse than a failing grade.
