FrightFest review – What She Doesn’t Know
Chilean director Juan Pablo Arias Munoz’ teen horror film starts with a knowing imitation of Scream as mean girl Molly (Ella Anderson) tries on her prom dress and receives a scary prank phone call from a disguised-voice stalker. Later, we learn she’s become the latest victim of a serial killer known as ‘Genesis’ or ‘the Rib-Snatcher’ because victims always have one rib ripped out.
However, after this, practically the whole film takes place in a brutalist luxury home where Brynn (Jessica Belkin) is hosting an exclusive ‘too pretty for prom party’ for her best friend Indy (Siena Agudong) and tagalong Jordan (Conor Husting) – who suggests ‘too petty for prom’ would be more her speed. Brynn is a lonely rich blonde, whose father is supposedly off on a world tour with his latest trophy girlfriend – though it’s hinted that he might be lingering close enough to home to be a suspect. Molly’s mad mother (Denise Richards) shows up, furious not that her daughter has been killed but that Brynn’s Dad has ghosted her. Indy is bonded with Brynn because they both have sad suicides in the family (a sister, a mother) but can’t get up the nerve to admit she’s been accepted into NYU and is moving away from town – leaving Brynn to her own devices, which include being attacked by that knife-wielding mad mom and working on necro-themed paintings of her loved ones. Screenwriters Terry Castle and Sarah Howard spend a lot of time on girl talk, with exposition tipped in as if this were a stage play – and slowly ease the film out of its apparent genre into something spookier … as Indy and Jordan start to glimpse ghosts around the house and Brynn becomes more diva-like.
The film pulls a couple of decent surprises – though it plays fair with set-up clues – and is as much a character piece as a slasher/spooky horror film. A downside is that the whole climax has to depend on a character introduced late in the day – Indy’s mom (Maria Zhang) – while all the plot pieces thrown up in the air are fit together in a new configuration.
Here’s the FrightFest listing.
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