Main cast: Kacey Rohl (Sabrina Swanson), Asha Bromfield (Margo), Varun Saranga (Ronnie), Humberly González (Rosario), Nikki Duval (Meg), Jonathan Langdon (George), Linda Goranson (Mrs Blakeslee), Michael Xavier (Jed), and Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll (DJ)
Director: Jem Garrard
Sabrina Swanson’s life has remained stunted ever since she left high school ten years ago. Back then, she was an overachiever and prom queen, but she had to forgo college to take care of her sick mother. Now, much older and trapped in a dying town, she has banked all her hopes on hosting the upcoming high school reunion. She has been donating blood for years just to get enough money to rent a swanky ballroom for the reunion… only to be told by her best friend Margo and the former high school nerd Ronnie that said hotel is shutting down just before the reunion can take place. Oops.
Ah, but as Ronnie suggests, they can use their old, now abandoned high school as the venue for the reunion. That place is going to be torn down to make way for a cemetery—how meta—so hosting the reunion there can be seen as one last hurrah for the alumni. Sabrina feels so much better now that everything she has banked her hopes and dreams on is finally back in order. Onward to the best reunion that the Wallingham High School Class of 2008 will ever see!
Only, previously some kids on a scavenger hunt had unearthed a long-buried uniform of the high school mascot, a warthog, and put it on. Due to some supernatural curse that is never fully explained here, the uniform quickly possessed the kid, morphing the kid into a huge, monstrous warthog that is now on a rampage to make sure that this high school reunion is indeed one to die for…
Despite Killer High being a Syfy original movie—cringe—and being billed as a horror-comedy, it actually has a surprising and unexpected amount of poignancy. Sabrina is a neurotic and high-strung character, but there is something tragic about how her biggest and most desperate ambition in life is to host this high school reunion that will allow her to briefly relive the best years of her life. Later in this movie, she will want to make a last stand against the warthog because, as she tells her high school arch-nemesis Rosario, with this reunion completely ruined (to put it mildly), she has nothing left to live for, nothing to look forward to. The whole thing, and the whole character, is pretty tragic and Sabrina is, to my surprise, a pretty sympathetic character at the end of the day.
Ronnie and Margo seem on paper to be the token sidekicks of color, but Ronnie ends up being a very memorable character in his own right: despite having achieved much success in his career, he too remains trapped in the past as he can never find the confidence to face the people who gave him a hard time in school; yet, he is such a self-effacing and humorous character that I can’t help but to adore him. As for Rosario, she and Sabrina manage to forge some kind of friendship at the end of the day—a development that adds some depths to both characters.
This movie manages to capture much of the more awkward sides of high school reunions: the passive-aggressive grandstanding, the awkward forced conversations, and all. Hence, anyone who had been in such a situation may find vicarious joy when the warthog shows up to put an end to the tedium in a most adorably bloody gore-a-thon. The kills are nasty, and some of them are cheerfully paused for freeze frame effects to often darkly amusing results. Some of these kills are hilarious too, but I have to warn folks that start to care too much for some characters: some likable ones bite the dust here, sometimes in cruel twists of fate, so there may be some feels too that can be had while watching this thing.
Half high school reunion comedy, half monster rampage movie, Killer High nonetheless manages to blend both elements for an unexpectedly fun good time movie for folks that like gore and guts all over the screen. I really like this one, and I personally won’t mind seeing a sequel or prequel that will explain more about the warthog monster’s origins. Anyway, yes, this one is the killer indeed.
