The Dorm (2014)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Blistering performances.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

It's perhaps worthy of a lightly higher score then it's currenty showing, it's somewhere between a 5.5 and a 6. It certainly looks nice, it's a slick and stylish movie, it's nicely shot, definitely visually appealing. The story is pretty good, of course there are holes in it, the first being what on Earth was in that tea? For a teen horror though it's pretty good, especially for a TV movie. Dont expect miracles, but it's diverting enough. 6/10

This is a made for TV film. Ugly duckling Vivian (Alexis Knapp) with low self esteem transfers to another university where no one knows her after her suicide attempt. She is befriended by the dorm and is taken under the wing of Sarah (Cassie Steele) who transform her into a swan with some natural tea. Vivian gets herself a hot boyfriend (Max Lloyd-Jones) but realizes there are some odd things going on and it is not just her normal voices in her head.The film feels slightly disjointed and the climax lacked the needed cinematography. The film left me expecting more, but didn't deliver.As far as I know there is no such religion as "pre-Babylonian Albanism.

A mentally unwell student is accepted by her new dorm-mates, who transform her into a confident beauty with a mysteriously intoxicating tea. But she grows suspicious of their motives and begins to find hallucinatory evidence of something amiss.Standard occult conspiracy horror that probably reveals its twist too early - if the emphasis on the missing student had been held back to the very end, when the protagonist has to confront her, and the confrontation had been more involved, it would have heightened the effect. And the end sequence didn't create much sense of loss. It's pretty well made by a director who seems to do mostly TV, but the sex 'n gore is tame and nobody's going to get extreme chills just from the plot, unlike say The Skeleton Key, which shares elements of the concept. Lead actress is impressive, and a striking beauty too, and the rest of the cast do fine.Maybe the biggest problem with this is the music - it sometimes has an MTV feel, with one tense scene ruined as miserable strumming competes with the dialogue. And the sound effects are a bit hammy.Overall, watchably average. And a short run time.

Vivian, a shy and self-conscious college freshman, transforms into a new person after she moves into a building with a popular coed, and of course, by drinking lots and lots of delicious tea....When we first meet Vivian, she's frumpy, disturbed, and of course without make up. But then the one from the code who looks like Myleene Klass, gets her to come to a party and meet the other housemates.Soon the frump goes, then the make up is slapped on, but something is amiss, she is told of the person who lived in her room before, Violet, and how she went missing.Soon people start turning up dead, Vivian starts to hear voices, and physically she is starting to look different.....It's very, very loosely based on an Urban Legend, the one where the student in your room before you disappeared mysteriously. Everyone's been told that, I was told that, and I told someone else. It's probably the most universal of Urban Myths.I've always found the directors work very interesting, she tried to do something different with Freddy's Dead, and Tank Girl maybe a lot of things, but it certainly isn't boring.This feels like a Gothic teen mix of She's All That, The Craft, and a hint of Rosemary's baby.It's all highly predictable stuff, you know from the offset that something isn't right, because, without sounding too shallow, they wouldn't invite her into her little coven, without ulterior motives.The acting is fine, just what you'd expect from a TV movie, and it goes a little bonkers toward the end, but in an age where we get at least two to three horror movies every week released, it could have been a lot worse.Worth seeing if you like throwaway, predictable horror.