Tamara

I was fortunate to have seen an early screening of TAMARA and was quite impressed with the final result. The film is propelled by the star-making turns of its two leading female characters, Tamara (Jenna Dewan) and Chloe (Katie Stuart). Dewan is a real find, striking a terrific balance between pathos and horror. She makes quite an impact in her first starring role, and the fact that she's also quite stunning certainly does nothing to diminish her screen presence! Stuart's performance as the tragic do-gooder lends real weight and credibility to the film. It's a smart and sincere performance and not just another sassy-talking teen role that too often occupies this genre. The film is engaging throughout and provides some well-placed shock-and-gore to keep its pace humming along. Credit Jeff Reddick's screenplay for that- here's a film clearly written by someone who respects the genre. He never condescends to his audience, and just like in his film, FINAL DESTINATION, includes enough cleverly gruesome moments to ensure that the experience will memorable. While certain performances and scenes could have been tighter, all in all TAMARA makes for a solid entry in the horror genre and mercifully rises above the pack of overly slick (and perhaps overly sick) entries that horror fans have had to contend with as of late.

This is my first time posting, but I recently saw Tamara and after reading some of the hatin' on this board, I thought I'd add my opinion.

People have already covered the story, so I'll just talk about the film . While it's not the best movie I've seen, it was a definitely a great way to spend 90 minutes. It had a sexy lead, some great kills and a wicked sense of humor. I'm definitely going to see it again.

The good...

I thought the story was well written and well paced. As a horror fan, I hate when people say something's not horror, but a psychological thriller...butthat's what this film was. Sure, we know Tamara's gonna get revenge on her tormentors. But instead of just killing them off with an axe or a knife, her revenge is more psychological. She toys with the other kids and gets back at them in ways I've never seen. I thought it was clever that she didn't just go around slaughtering them.

Jenna Dewan, the actress who plays Tamara, does a great job. You feel sorry for her in the beginning and when she comes back...she's amazing. She's not just evil. She's sexy and fun...if it wasn't for the whole "back from the dead" thing, she'd be the perfect hottie. If Jenna isn't a star in the next few years, I'll eat my...well, I'll eat something I don't like. She does a great job.

I thought the directing was good too. I'm so tired of seeing MTV-style movies that are cut so fast and shot so dark that you can't see what was going on. The film obviously had a low budget, but they made the best of it.

The bad...

The film's not perfect. People expecting a lot of blood and gore, will be disappointed. But the stuff that's there really works...the Roger scene is classic. Also, I'm not a perv, but since the story was so sexy, I would have liked to seen more skin. There's some scenes...both with the gore and the sex...where they could have gone a lot further.

Some of the acting. Overall, I thought the acting was really good, but there were a pair of actors I didn't like. (I won't name names, because I don't get off on being nasty.)

Overall, this was obviously a low budget movie, but I think it delivered the goods. It's much better than a lot of the big budget stuff I've seen (The Fog...) And for the dude who thought it should go direct to DVD....check out all of Lions Gate's direct to DVD crap. This movie kicks the sh*t out of them. Actually, aside from Saw and High Tension, I think this is the best genre film they've put out.

Peace,

It's exactly what it advertises: a B-horror revenge slasher with a witch.

The plot is exactly what is says in the four sentence description they provide with no twists or turns and when it ended I just thought "well that was fine"

The beginning was extra slow to get going and it did make me think about turning it off.

They do a pretty nice job with some of the witch stuff. The b-horror feel is there, and the gore effects were pretty good making me squirm a couple times. The revenge half of the movie is pretty well paced.

Unfortunately: The dialog was generic and boring. The acting wasn't great all around. The story was flat and shallow.

This feels like exactly the kind of movie you could see on tv and always know exactly what's happening even if you missed a bit. If you want something on in the background, this would work well, but that's not a bad thing.

Don't you just hate it when this happens? Now that you finally found yourself a gorgeous looking high school sweetheart, she turns out to be a murderous witch, capable of making you eat glass beer bottles with the touch of her hand! Damn! But Tamara has some very good reasons to be this cranky. The popular crowd at school tricked her into believing that the handsome and beloved English teacher has finally fallen for her, too, and set up a whole fake meeting in a sleazy hotel room. That's a pretty good reason to get rancorous already but, on top of that, they also accidentally killed her, buried her body in the woods and made a pact to keep it a secret. Thanks to several puberty years of casting spells, Tamara rises from the dead like a gorgeous babe with exclusively vengeance on her mind. First and foremost, I think it's hilarious how these movies portray the so-called "unattractive" girl. Tamara was never ugly to begin with, so simply combing her hair and wearing a push-up bra already turns her into a teenage sex bomb! "Tamara" isn't a very good horror film, mainly because it lacks originality and surprises. A big list of horror movies, which featured similar plots before, promptly comes to mind: There's "Carrie" (of course), but also "The Craft", "I know What You Did Last Summer" and even a bit of "I Spit On Your Grave". There's few to no tension in the script, although I do have to admit that the film actually was a lot gorier than I expected it to be. The playful deaths Tamara has in mind for her enemies are quite ingenious and close to being pure splatter. One poor sucker, for example, commits suicide live on school-TV whereas a girl pukes up gallons of blood. The acting performances are far above average, especially the females are good, and Jenna Dewan is definitely a promising talent to keep an eye on. Overall, this surely isn't a memorable new horror movie, but it never bores you and it's at least as good (if not better) than most big-budgeted Hollywood productions that receive theater-releases.

Jenna Dewan stands out in this revenge-against-my-classmates movie>you've seen this kind of movie before but Jenna Dewan deserves repeat viewing.