review for Hell High on AllMovie

Hell High is a unique and curious (but still not very good) example of the slasher genre. The filmmakers must be given credit for unique ideas: the killer is a female, there is no sexual bias to the killings and the story concept is unusually complex and involved. Unfortunately, Hell High falls flat despite its ambitions due to flat-footed realization on all fronts. The script lets its many interesting conceits down by making all the characters unsympathetic, indulging in many lapses of logic and failing to give the plotting a sense of urgency. These problems carry over to Douglas Grossman's direction: he occasionally show flashes of style but his pacing is erratic at best, particularly during the film's second half, and he lacks the kind of macabre flair that this material demands. In terms of performances, the standouts are Maureen Mooney and Christopher Stryker: Mooney hams it up in a ludicrous soap-opera style as the batty anti-heroine and Stryker offers an unintentionally campy version of a method-style performance as her main teen tormentor. Neither is terribly convincing but at least they offer some personality, which is more than can be said for the rest of the humdrum performances. In short, Hell High has some interest to hardcore horror buffs as a curio but few others are likely to be interested.