Thank God this movie was free On Demand… And with that you can tell exactly what kind of review this will be.
Study Hell is written and directed Mark McNabb. Previously McNabb has directored Dark Fields, which I actually quite liked. Study Hell stars Brian Austin Jr., Randy Cunningham, Lindsay Dell (also from Dark Fields), Ryan Fisher, Michael Henry, and Stephen McDougall.
In Study Hell, a handful of rowdy teens are kept late at school one night to serve detention. Unfortunately for them, their monitor is losing grip with reality and all he needs is one confrontation to send him over the edge.
So, yeah, basically this movie is horrible. I usually try to find some redeeming quality in every movie I review. Being a film maker myself, I know it’s difficult to craft a project. But, this is really just…horrible.
Let’s start with the in-your-face rip off of The Breakfast Club. Study Hell is The Breakfast Club but at night, set in the 2000s, and with some horror involved. The rip off even goes as far as to use actual dialogue from the classic film. Now, I’m a fan of subtle references and homages, but the rip offs are pretty blatant; from the characters, to the props, again dialogue, everything. And here’s the thing – if you are going to parody a widely successful movie, then you need to do it well. Study Hell doesn’t land a single parody punch well and it had me saying, “…really?” throughout the entire viewing.
Next we go to the killer, the teacher Mr. Don. Don is haunted by his past and more frequently his P.T.S.D. from being a war veteran. He decides to go into his homicidal murdering spree due to his P.T.S.D. and believing that he is in some sort of war situation again. This is brought on by, well, absolutely nothing. He has to yell at one of the detentioners, which happens in every school across the globe, and that is seemingly enough to throw him over the edge and into mass murder. It’s just not very believable and insulting to veterans with real P.T.S.D.
Even the production quality of Study Hell is below average. There is a definitely problem with voice sync and at times you feel like you’re watching a Japanese monster movie. The audio track isn’t layered right at all, nor was it edited in a professional manner, so at times the dialogue is “spoken” too loud or too low. I’m also not a fan of the production’s choice of making the school appear dark to show that it’s night time. If you had a good writer, then they could have gotten that little idea across through plot development and dialogue. What I’m trying to say is – Study Hell looks like it was shot without a lighting guy. And don’t get me started on the blonde girl with big boobs who mysteriously looks 100% different halfway through the movie.
Rubbish… Rubbish… It goes to show that you shouldn’t make a movie just because you can. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. 2.7 out of 10.
