A young activist is sent to a school for difficult girls, where manners mask a dark secret.A young activist is sent to a school for difficult girls, where manners mask a dark secret.A young activist is sent to a school for difficult girls, where manners mask a dark secret.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaFails the reverse Bechdel Test (no male characters speak to each other).
- ConnectionsReferences The Twilight Zone (1959)
Featured review
Pleasantly Surprised (mostly spoiler free)
As a 90s kid who grew up reading and watching the Goosebumps series, I was very willing to try out this new Disney + Anthology series inspired by the writings of R. L. Stine. I have tried going back and watching the old Goosebumps as an adult and the experience is ok at best. It's really hard to re-live those childhood scares and feeling of intrigue as an adult because time has made the tropes, effects and acting cheesy by modern standards. However, past attempts to re-boot Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark, So Weird and other spooky kids classics have not faired so well, until recently. I was skeptical whether this would be good, but it seems the world of kids TV is taking a cue from adult television and determining that television should actually be well written. Though this was not the best piece of child friendly cinema I've seen recently (highly recommend the 2019 "Are You Afraid of the Dark" series on Netflix), it was surprisingly watchable. I am a full-blown adult so kids shows are not going to have the same effect on me as say a show like "American Horror Story" or "The Haunting of Hill House," but if I had kids I would definitely think of this as their version of shows like that. Especially the former as this is also an Anthology. The story was super short, but it got a lot done in the condensed state. I felt like I got a really good sense of the two main characters, though the side characters and the villainess were really lacking in development. I would have loved to learn more about the Headmistress and how/why she became the way she is. That was lacking and honestly I would have rather them take more time to develop her if they had to, or just tightened their writing further to have her explain herself, and add a little twist. Just anything to make her less one dimensional. Even with those one-dimensional characters, they still surprised me with just how much development of the children's characters there was in such a short span. We saw her friend at school for 5 seconds and we knew what kind of character she was, same with the girls at the new school who helped Veronica (main character) with her plot. It's not the best writing ever, but its pretty clever and does a great job in a short time, which is quite a challenge to do with a kids show without making it cheesy. So bravo to this first episode which surprisingly was not cheesy, had likable characters, great child actors and was very watchable even for a full-blown adult!
helpful•42
- corrineybyrd
- Nov 1, 2021
Details
- Runtime30 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.00 : 1
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