The Innsmouth School for Girls

Stumbling upon this 2023 horror movie titled "The Innsmouth School For Girls" by random chance here in 2024, I immediately had to sit down and watch it. Why? Well, I am a huge fan of the works of H. P. Lovecraft, and thus also interesting in things Lovecraftian in nature. However, most of the Lovecraftian movies out there are questionable affairs, so I wasn't exactly harboring the biggest of expectations to this movie from writer and director Joshua Kennedy.

But with it being movie that managed to elude my radar, and my fascination with the Cthulhu Mythos, of course I had to give this movie a fair chance. I might just have been missing out on something grand.

However, given the movies title and the way that the movie started, I have to say that I got a vibe that just screamed "Wednesday", as that popular TV series spin-off from "The Addams Family".

I was not familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, but the acting performances were actually good. They had a good ensemble of actresses and actors for the various roles in the movie.

"The Innsmouth School For Girls" is not a movie that is driven by special effects, like many movies nowadays, probably a budget issue. Regardless, the storytelling in the movie didn't need an impressive display of multi-million dollar CGI effects to be effective. Nay, writer and director Joshua Kennedy managed to accomplish quite a lot with sparse and low key special effects.

While the movie might be relatively low budget, it is definitely a movie that is made with heart and spirit, and writer and director Joshua Kennedy seems to have a relatively firm grasp on his Lovecraftian lore as the references and subtle hints throughout the movie are spot on. And there were a fair amount of references throughout the course of the movie, if you are well-traversed in your Lovecraftian lore.

If you enjoy movies that are based on the impressive world that H. P. Lovecraft created, then "The Innsmouth School For Girls" is actually a fair movie, and it is worth checking out, especially if you're familiar with the story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth".

The movie did, however, end rather abruptly and suddenly. It felt like the movie was not even close to being finished. A rushed production? Running out of funding? I don't know, but it was by no means a proper ending.

My rating of "The Innsmouth School For Girls" lands on a six out of ten stars.

Decided to watch this in a fit of boredom and didn't expect anything good if I'm being honest. The acting isn't great but has a kind of cheap exploitation film stiltedness which doesn't seem entirely out of place.

Imagine my surprise when it actually turned out to be a pretty decent attempt at adapting the original story.

I've seen all the other versions of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and none of them are particularly good but "The Innsmouth School For Girls" actually stands out at being a more faithful retelling than most. Even the abrupt ending is pretty much spot on. (The protagonist's final monologue is quoted earlier in the film by one of the schoolgirls)

It includes nearly all the salient plot points but not necessarily as you would imagine them and overall has quite a foreboding vibe despite some of its shortcomings. I'm not blind to its idiosyncrasies. Tone can be a little off and tension is sparse but anyone who knows the story will have to admit that the addition of deliberately building a girl's boarding school in Innsmouth has some less than savoury connotations.

Amateur cast, tiny budget, limited location work but I actually quite enjoyed it for what it was.

I've really tried with Kennedy's stuff, and the few times I've seen one of his horror movies I've regretted spending the thirty or so minutes I've wasted watching. I've seen his Dracula knock off on YouTube and that was low budget, and embarrassing. Here it seems he's somehow got a decent budget, but he still has no talent. He shamelessly rips off better cult films and thinks it's homaging, it's not. It merely reminds you there's better made movies out there you could be watching instead. I really wanted to give this one a shot, but it's amateur hour all around with embarrassing performances, including his own, and cheap effects. The rubber masks are painfully obvious. Even viewed as "schlocky", it's not even fun. There's better shlock to enjoy than this. I'm not going to allow myself to be tricked by another of Kennedy's movies again. I rented this on Amazon and wanted to warn others against wasting the time or $2 rental fee. Watch a good Lovecraft movie like FROM BEYOND or DAGON which are both streaming for free instead.

The Plot: Roberta Olmstead enrolls at a mysterious school supervised by an even more mysterious staff.

The real mystery is how did this movie get funding? It's horrible.

The storyline is absolutely ridiculous and makes no sense. Girl arrives at school all alone in the middle of the night and the gate is locked. Someone screams at her to get lost. Then it starts raining and she magically has a yellow umbrella. They buzz her in and she has to walk around a dark building until she meets a dude with a completely fake English accent!. And here begins the movie.

The acting is horrible. The directing is horrible and the script is moronic.

Stay away.

The poster for "The Innsmouth School for Girls" shows two girls in school outfits running away from some monster. It says, "Recommended for Adult Entertainment." It's produced by "Gooey Productions" which has made a series of, let's say, less than top of the line films. As I settled down to watch, my expectations were set. But you know what? A funny thing happened on the way to watching what I expected to be a piece of shlock film-making -- a fair HP Lovecraft adaptation broke out.

"The Innsmouth School for Girls" is a pretty decent adaptation of HP Lovecraft's "The Shadow over Innsmouth." Barnabas Marsh and his family are there, Zadok Allen is there to give exposition, and the legend and story-line of Lovecraft's novella is there in spades. Hilda Sofia Bautista, in her first movie role (she gets the "Introducing" credit), stars as Roberta Olmstead who comes to stay at the titular school. When she gets there she and her fellow students realize that there is something odd with the staff and with the people in Innsmouth...

I was pleasantly surprised at how well this played as an actual Lovecraft adaptation. Just well done all around. Writer/director Joshua Kennedy seems to have more than just a passing familiarity with his source material (for example, the narrator in Lovecraft's tale is unnamed, but if you research Lovecraft you know that in notes he wrote about the story he named him as "Robert Olmstead", so the protagonist's name is a clever renaming) and handles everything really well for a low budget film.

All the actors give solid performances that belies how new they are to the task. Almost the entire cast is, apparently, new to movies and the film actually celebrates that with an extended end credit sequence. My biggest complaint is that the movie just sort of "ends" in the middle of things, not sure if they just ran out of money or time but it just sort of rushes to a completion and then stops.

All in all, "The Innsmouth School for Girls" get a solid, and surprising, recommendation.