Review: ‘Seance’ pays its respects to messy late ’90s teen slashers

Simon Barrett has gone on record saying he’s seen every slasher ever made. That’s a tall claim, yet much of his work to-date, from penning scripts for You’re Next and The Guest to recent spooky fare like “The Empty Grave” in the newly-dropped V/H/S/94 anthology, certainly affirms his breadth of genre knowledge. With his directorial feature film release, Seance, Barrett pays tribute to messy late ’90s teen horror (think Urban Legend) with a haunted ghost story that breaks its own rules. It doesn’t always stick the landing but its fussiness over character and story actually makes it incredibly charming.

A sprawling all-girls boarding school, nestled in a snow-capped Winnipeg, is an ample backdrop on which to unravel an urban legend about a young girl who once killed herself on the grounds. The isolation hangs thick in the air, and the students must depend on one another to create community and sisterhood. When a group of classmates play a mirror game, akin to Bloody Mary and Candyman, their trickery sends one of their friends to an untimely death out of her dorm window. Circumstances are naturally suspicious, leading many to believe a tortured spirit the cause of the tragedy.

Once new girl Camille (Suki Waterhouse) arrives on campus, and boards up in the dead girl’s room, the film plays with the notion of perception versus reality, guiding the viewer into a distorted hall of mirrors. With dark secrets of her own, Camille faces off against Alice (Inanna Sarkis) and her Sorority Row posse and begins experiencing ghostly midnight hauntings. Things are never exactly as they seem, and even the audience begins to question whether a vengeful spirit possesses an ungodly bloodlust — or a string of murders is simply child’s play enacted by one of their own. Barrett keeps a shroud over the story and invites you to partake in this coming-of-age ghost tale. There’s murder afoot, and it’s not what one might expect.

Bonds of commitment and trust are elastic in Barrett’s world. If they snap, and they inevitably do, you can simply retie the frayed ends and try again. Seance works best as a sleepy midnight screening, its own jagged edges ripe for the gasps and laughs that’ll certainly come as one nears the Scream-like finale. When the mask finally slips, the disorder beneath will either be delightful to some or agonizing for others. In either instance, Waterhouse delivers a strong, griping performance to keep the story’s bones firmly intact.

Seance is now streaming on Shudder.

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