minlin Review of Innocence

Innocence (I) (2013)

Meh. I guess it's not the worst film I've ever seen.

[5/10 · 17 July 2020]

I found this DVD at the dollar store, and thought it might be entertaining. I wasn't expecting great cinema, but I figured at worst it might be hilariously bad and thus still somewhat enjoyable. Sadly, it wasn't trashily bad enough to be much fun. If you want to watch it unspoiled, you can stream it free on Tubi, if not here's a rundown of the plot. Beckett's mom dies in the first scene and she and her author dad move to Manhattan hoping a change of scenery will help ease their grief. Beckett's promptly enrolled in a fancy private school which has a faculty made up of only gorgeous women. She befriends Toby, the son of her dad's editor who is clearly there to be her romantic interest, and Jen, a bit of a misfit with an alcoholic mom. Beckett has visions of blood and hears mysterious whispers on her first day of school. Then one of her new classmates commits suicide. Her dad wants to pull her out of school, but Beckett decides to tough it out. The very pretty school nurse takes a sympathetic interest in Beckett and sets up counselling with the school shrink. She then takes a romantic interest in Beckett's dad, and moves in with them. She tries to win over Beckett by giving her an expensive dress and warning her against premarital sex. Beckett starts to suspect something weird is going on, especially when more students turn up dead. Beckett is proven right when it turns out that all the pretty faculty, and one snotty student, are incarnations of Lamia, who must kill and drink the blood of virgins to stay young and beautiful forever. Which has been going on for more than a century, though apparently nobody has noticed that the school's staff doesn't age. Or that a lot of the virginal students end up dead. However Beckett ends up not being killed because she ignored the nurse's warning and had sex with Toby. She kills the nurse, which conveniently kills the rest of the pretty faculty too. And Jen's mom, who was a neglectful alcoholic because she felt guilty that she was planning to sacrifice her virgin daughter. Most of the acting was pretty good, and it was well shot. Technically speaking it's a well made movie. Yet it dragged a lot in places, despite only being about 90 minutes long. Frankly, despite a few eerie moments and a few deaths it was a bit dull. I appreciated that there wasn't really any gore, but a few more scary moments would have helped. Also, it's kind of odd that one of the messages of the film seems to be that teen sex is necessary for survival.