The Dead Ones has a lot going against it: the four wayward teenagers at the center of its story aren’t particularly sympathetic, it’s a high-concept psychological Silent Hill-esque horror film, and it also takes on the extremely sensitive and difficult subject of school shootings. All of these are potential pitfalls that have tripped up other filmmakers, but somehow director Jeremy Kastan and writer Zach Chassler have managed to put together a film involving all of these elements that relatively works.
The film centers on four high school friends, Mouse (Sarah Rose Harper), Scottie (Brandon Thane Wilson), Emily (Katie Foster), and her boyfriend Louis (Torey Garza), as our Breakfast Club-esque stereotypical friend group who have been brought back to their trashed school by their teacher Ms. Persephone (Clare Kramer) as punishment for an unspecified incident that allegedly led to the trashing of the school.
We then get a slasher style set-up as four more menacing figures, dressed as the four horsemen of the apocalypse, enter the school, set up booby traps, and chain the exits, all while our unwitting group goes about tidying up. However, what follows isn’t a slasher at all, as the four students are instead slowly, psychologically, and traumatically haunted by manifestations of their past demons and have to navigate the school to survive these hauntings.
You very quickly get the idea that something is wrong with The Dead Ones. The school setting doesn’t make sense. It’s pretty post-apocalyptic and looks like a bomb has gone off, which is very reminiscent of the hospital setting in Silent Hill. But the film wastes no time in explaining what’s actually happening when it starts to intersperse the main narrative with flashback footage of the same four horsemen committing a school shooting and we realize that this is the ‘event’ that trashed the school.
The horror elements displayed, both the hauntings with ghostly creatures and psychological torture as well as the real-life and unfiltered graphic horror of the shooting, chill you as the audience in a variety of ways. With so many different dread-inducing moments, heaps of scary aesthetics and atmosphere, plus elements of shocking gore, The Dead Ones is an extremely effective horror film.
The film’s major twist, which is telegraphed and obvious to pretty much anyone who is paying attention, is also a good justification for the film’s use of a school shooting as a major element and explains why the four teenagers aren’t necessarily likable protagonists. It’s through this reveal that we learn that The Dead Ones is actually much more meta-physical than people may have initially realized and subsequently ties the whole film together.
After this, all of the film’s little moments and flourishes become more impactful. The four horsemen iconography and even the teacher’s name, Ms. Persephone, are given greater meaning. This all culminates in a tense finale and a neat, hard-hitting, and poignant ending that loops the narrative in a clever way.
Ultimately The Dead Ones treads a fine line between glorifying and exploiting school shootings for entertainment and succeeds with its harrowing tale of crime and punishment and its exploration of the dark mind, twisted justification, and troubled psyche of a school shooter. It also uses biblical framing, nightmarish tone, and setting to great effect to suggest that, although definitely doomed, even the most lost of souls can find redemption. Definitely a surprising gem and a potential future cult classic.
The Dead Ones will be released on DVD/Blu-ray and VOD/Digital on September 29, 2020.
