User Reviews

Horror 101 starts as a psychology class at a high school taught by Allison James (Bo Derek) are told that the term is coming to an end & that their final assignments must be presented soon with the very last class due for late one Thursday night. The eight students prepare to present their work but one of their number Mark (Josh Holland) fails to turn up, the teacher Miss James also mysteriously goes AWOL before the local class psycho Brian (Justin Urich) starts behaving weirdly while carrying around what looks like a blood soaked bag. The worried students realise the school is empty, they are alone & as more of them begin to disappear that one of them might be a killer...

Produced & directed James Glenn Dudelson I am not quite sure who Horror 101 is meant to appeal too or what the makers were trying to achieve. The script apparently took three people to write it which I find simply incredible as it's so predictable, routine & utterly toothless. Horror 101 is an uneasy & unsatisfying mixture of genres from mystery as the students begin to disappear for no apparent reason & no-one knows who is responsible including us the audience, there's a horror element with a typical group of annoying American teens being stalked in a very familiar high school setting & there's a thriller edge as well with various attempts at plot twists & turns which don't come off at all. I mean for instance we never even find out what was in the bag anyway so what was the point of bigging it up so much? Unfortunately none of these genres are done justice, the mystery elements are rubbish & the red herrings are too obvious the plot & it's outcomes are fairly easy to predict, there's absolutely no horror content worth noting as not one single character is killed (there's a scene at the start in which someone is killed but this turns out to be part of a film that a class of students are watching) during the film & not one single drop of blood is shed while the thriller side of things don't work either as seemingly endless scenes of annoying teen character's wandering around high school corridors looking for their lost friends becomes really dull & isn't exciting, suspenseful or thrilling in the slightest. Basically Horror 101 tries to please several sorts of potential viewer buts ends up as a complete disaster that has no edge, no blood, no gore, no sex, no nudity, no thrills, no surprises & a really rubbishy ending that if you can't predict your already dead.

Set entirely in a high school the constant bland corridors become very boring & repetitive, the lighting is too bright & there's seemingly no attempt by the filmmakers at atmosphere or scares. Except for a very small scene in a film being watched at the start there isn't a single drop of blood in the entire film, no-one is killed on screen & there's no violence or gore. The character's are annoying & clichéd & are very stupid in their decision making & they all deserve to die which unfortunately never happens so that also ends the film on a downer.

Production wise the film actually looks reasonable although there's no real style or class to it, it certainly looks better than a lot of low budget horror crap out there that look like they were shot on a camcorder. The only cast member of note is a small cameo Bo Derek who's most famous role was probably baring all in 10 (1979) alongside Dudley Moore.

Horror 101 is a really poor, boring, uneventful horror mystery thriller that is a total waste of time & doesn't satisfy or deliver on any level. I have no idea who would enjoy this predictable tamer than tame film. Followed by Horror 102: Endgame (2004) which I hope is a big improvement on Horror 101 since I'm going to watch it soon.