Tamara (2005)
(In French, On Cable TV, October 2020) There are many ways through which Tamara could have been more interesting, and analytical viewers may have more fun contemplating the paths not taken than the ones that it does follow. Adapting Carrie to the mid-2000s, Tamara features a mousy (but supernaturally obsessed) student come back from the dead to take revenge on the classmates responsible for her humiliating murder. The film could have gone in many directions from there, and indeed does run on parallel tracks: While it portrays its lead character as an avenging demon, it also tries to muster some sympathy for the students killed off, and that’s only one of the ways in which the result seems incoherent. The demands of schlock horror films mandate that something spooky (preferably fatal) happens every few minutes, leading to the antagonist playing with her prey for no perceptible reasons, keeping some of them for later and trying some fancy new kills along the way. (If I ever become an avenging demon, I’m going for efficient surprise: All of them dead in minutes, allowing them no chance to realize that they’re in danger and form a counter-attack plan.) But then the film doesn’t necessarily go for the deserving targets, nor does it stick to the teenage audience: By the time Tamara goes after her teacher’s wife, the teacher becomes the one to resolve the conflict. While there’s a perceptible amount of teenage commentary going on, it’s not developed long enough to be effective, and sequences in which the avenging demon does the oh-so-unspeakable thing of convincing two jocks to have sex together (right before convincing the beauty queen to stuff her face with food) come across as entirely wasted in a film that can’t be bothered to make use of even the most basic elements of satire. I did like Jenna Dewan switching between mousy and bewitching, as well as Melissa Elias as the irremediable prom queen… but there isn’t much more to Tamara than that. Too bad—anyone with half a clever wit could have been able to do a much better script.