When troubled 12-year-old Jacob Felsen is sent away to boarding school, he enters every kid’s worst nightmare: A creepy old mansion, deserted except for six other teenage misfits and two menacing and mysterious teachers. As events become increasingly horrific, Jacob must conquer his fears to find the strength to survive.
Horror films have begun a redefinition in recent years, a deeper representation of horrors of the world personified. Monsters have generated new fears in the silent haunting of A Quiet Place, while racism has found its own sadistic representation within a reinvigorated form of the body snatchers with last year’s Get Out. This year, re-innovation has found itself in Boarding School, a film by director Boaz Yakin that examines the ostracized differences perceived in others and in one’s own self.
Boarding School is not without its flaws, yet its meanings and representations dive deeper than the typical thrillers that have come before it. History is imbued between the lines of exposition and dialogue, discovering who we are and what will come to pass to become who we will be. I was pleasantly surprised at the depth Boarding School is able to achieve, as well as the entertainment it was able to maintain – placing itself within this new generation of horror.