Pop Quiz, Horror Fans: How Low Can Slashers Go?
If you’ve ever sat through a bad slasher and thought, “Well, at least it can’t get worse than this,” allow me to introduce you to After School Massacre — the cinematic equivalent of getting a D-minus in Film Studies and still handing in your project.
Written and directed by Jared Masters (whose name sounds like it belongs on a magic set rather than a director’s chair), this 2014 travesty was originally titled Teacher’s Day — a name that at least makes sense before the movie forgets what it’s about halfway through. The film’s premise sounds simple enough: a disgraced teacher snaps and goes on a killing spree at a teenage slumber party. Classic slasher setup, right? Easy to pull off? Wrong. So wrong.
Instead of suspense, tension, or even coherent lighting, we get 90 minutes of stilted dialogue, botched kills, and acting that makes middle-school theater look like Shakespeare in the Park.
The Plot: Facebook, Fire, and Forgettable Carnage
The story begins with high school students Devon (Nikole Howell) and Jess (Savannah Matlow), who both have a crush on their teacher Ty Anderson (Bruce Kade). They convince him to accept their Facebook friend requests, because apparently this is still 2008 in Jared Masters’ America.
When Ty flirts back online, the girls — instead of simply blocking him like normal humans — report him to the principal, who promptly fires him. Fair enough. Unfortunately for everyone involved (especially the audience), this pushes Ty over the edge. He murders the principal and secretary, then decides the logical next step is to crash the girls’ slumber party and kill everyone in sight.
From here, the film devolves into what I can only describe as a student film shot on an iPhone 3 by someone allergic to tripods.
The “slumber party” setting is the perfect opportunity for either genuine tension or exploitative fun — but Masters somehow manages to deliver neither. The dialogue sounds like it was written by a chatbot trained exclusively on early-2000s teen dramas, and the pacing moves slower than an educational video about the dangers of peer pressure.
By the time the first kill happens (twenty long minutes in), you’re not so much scared as grateful something finally occurred.
The Killer: Mr. Anderson’s Opus (in Failure)
Bruce Kade’s performance as Ty Anderson is one for the history books — not because it’s good, but because it’s so spectacularly lifeless that it deserves its own exhibit in the Museum of Bad Acting.
Imagine if a regional theater Dracula went through a midlife crisis, discovered Hot Topic, and decided to become a slasher villain. That’s Ty Anderson. He doesn’t stalk; he saunters. He doesn’t menace; he mumbles. His idea of a killer catchphrase is… well, he doesn’t have one, because that would require charisma.
Even his murder weapons feel like they were chosen from the “garage sale” section of Spirit Halloween: mailbox poles, curling irons, and an electric knife that looks like it was borrowed from a church potluck. You can practically hear the props department whispering, “Please don’t break it — we have to return it on Monday.”
When he finally dons his “mask” — which looks like a melted dollar-store Michael Myers knockoff — you realize the scariest part of this movie is the thought that someone got paid to design it.
The Victims: High School Meatbags 101
The teen cast consists of the usual horror archetypes: The Sweet One, The Slutty One, The Jock, The Nerds, and The One Who Can’t Act But Screams Loudly. Unfortunately, they all share one thing in common — they’re profoundly unlikable.
Every conversation is either about booze, boys, or boobs, and none of it feels remotely natural. It’s like the dialogue was written by an alien who learned about teenagers from a stack of Maxim magazines and an episode of Saved by the Bell.
The girls’ acting alternates between wooden confusion and soap-opera overreaction. The guys are even worse: the nerds (Lonnie Gardner and Nick Sinise) are the kind of comic relief that makes you want to commit a crime, and Luke (Andrew Phillips) — the resident jock — delivers his lines as if auditioning to play a tree.
By the halfway mark, you’re actively rooting for Ty to finish them off just to end the noise.
The Deaths: Creative in Theory, Cheap in Execution
In theory, After School Massacre could have redeemed itself with some over-the-top kills. After all, even bad slashers can deliver memorable gore. But this film manages to make murder feel like homework.
Every death is filmed with the dramatic flair of a tax audit. The camera either cuts away before anything happens or lingers too long on rubber props that look fresh from a Party City clearance bin.
Highlights (and I use that term loosely) include:
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A girl getting impaled on a mailbox in a sequence so poorly lit it might as well be a podcast.
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Another suffocated in a tub of apples — because nothing screams danger like seasonal produce.
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A pizza delivery guy strangled for existing, marking perhaps the film’s most relatable victim.
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And the pièce de résistance: a curling iron shoved down someone’s throat, a kill that’s neither scary nor shocking, just confusing. (Who knew hair tools could double as blunt instruments of narrative torture?)
By the time the credits roll, the real horror is realizing not one of these deaths made you feel anything but mild irritation.
The Direction: A Master Class in Masterlessness
Jared Masters directs this film like he’s allergic to coherence. Scenes begin and end at random, the editing feels like it was done by someone with narcolepsy, and the camera angles scream “high school AV club project.”
Lighting? Nonexistent. Audio? A tin-can symphony. Color grading? There isn’t any. At times, you can see the boom mic — which, honestly, might be the most expressive actor in the film.
Even basic continuity is out the window. In one scene, a character’s shirt changes color mid-sentence. In another, someone dies, and five minutes later their corpse vanishes from the room with no explanation. It’s less “slasher film” and more “fever dream directed by a Roomba.”
The Tone: Slumber Party of the Damned
To its credit, After School Massacre tries to mix humor and horror — but the jokes land with all the grace of a collapsing folding chair. The film wants to be a cheeky, self-aware throwback to ’80s slashers, but it lacks the wit, energy, and, well, everything that made those movies work.
Instead of satire, we get scenes that are unintentionally hilarious: characters delivering exposition while clearly reading off cue cards, fake blood splattering like watered-down ketchup, and a final girl whose survival instincts would embarrass a houseplant.
When Jess, the lone survivor, gets run over by a car in the final moments (yes, that happens), it’s not tragic — it’s cathartic. It’s as if the film itself is putting her out of her misery.
The Real Victim: The Viewer
The true massacre in After School Massacre isn’t what happens to the characters — it’s what happens to your patience.
Every minute drags like an eternity. The kills are dull, the acting worse, and the pacing so off that even zombies would fall asleep halfway through. By the time the credits roll, you’ll be left staring at the screen in disbelief, wondering how something this aggressively mediocre got made at all.
Even Uwe Boll might watch this and say, “A bit much, don’t you think?”
Final Thoughts: Send It to Detention, Forever
After School Massacre isn’t scary, sexy, funny, or thrilling. It’s just there — a low-budget endurance test masquerading as a movie. It has the energy of a forgotten VHS you’d find at a garage sale labeled “DO NOT WATCH.”
If you’re looking for a good slasher, go watch Halloween. If you’re looking for an unintentional comedy, go watch The Room. But if you’re looking to lose faith in filmmaking entirely? Congratulations — class is in session.
Verdict: 1 out of 5 stars.
After School Massacre flunks every subject — script, acting, direction, and common sense. See me after class. Bring holy water.
