A month ago today, I was hit by a minivan in a Golden Corral parking lot. A tunnel of white light enveloped me with a warm puppy-like comfort. I didn’t plan to die that day, but I respect God’s plan for me. The light grew brighter and warmer before it shattered like one of those dang hippie lava lamps and I felt my body become solid again.
I opened my eyes and found myself in a room. Now this wasn’t just any room; red curtains surrounded the premises, three leather easy chairs, a few lamps, and a naked statue of the homeliest woman I ever saw. This was heaven?
I sat on one of the easy chairs and waited for what couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, but it felt like several years. I heard the footsteps of what sounded like a child, but in danced this tiny man.
“Excuse me, sir, where’s Saint Peter?” I asked.
He smiled and in the oddest backward voice said, “I am the arm of Saint Peter. He had the strangest voice, like he was speaking backward but I understood him?
He snapped his finger and some gosh darn beatnik jazz music played.
“Let’s rock.” He snapped again and I lost control over my body. Please don’t tell my wife, but I danced with this strange little man. Was this what death is? I wasn’t sure until we sat back down and he said, “Hold out your hands”.
“Garbonzia”, he said. Then, a creamed corn-like sludge fell from above into my hands and he ate it out of my hands like a goat in a petting zoo.
Things got a bit spooky when a gaunt, stringy man with long, grey hair crawled from underneath the curtain and leaped onto me. He screamed and nibbled on my ear with a little too much pressure.
Again, please don’t tell my wife about this, she’ll insist I go to therapy again.
I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but then a giant kraut the height of two Larry Birds rubbed my shoulder and told me, “See you again in twenty-five years.”
I woke up in the ICU and learned I was legally dead for five minutes. For years, when anyone asked about my near-death experience, I just told them about the warm white light; I couldn’t bear to ruin folks’ preconceived notions about hell.
Aside from teaching you about the horrors of class disparity, which by 7th grade you should already be well versed in, this movie has nothing to offer. Did R.L. Stine even go to high school? Some of these kids are addicted to drugs. What drugs, you ask? Just drugs, nameless assorted drugs of all different shapes and bright colors that they eat by the handful. The movie doesn’t even have a “Don’t do drugs” message, they’re just there to show you that this is a serious adult movie from the guy who wrote all the “Goosebumps” books. You can skip this lesson.
We’ve seen this movie a dozen times and still have no idea what the plot is. Don’t smoke radioactive weed? You probably weren’t going to but like, okay, good, DON’T.
The terrible script and cheap production values of an early ’00s Disney-made-for-TV movie lull you into a false sense of security and then BAM, hardcore gore! While its bizarre tonal shift may help kids come to terms with the fact that they are quickly leaving childhood behind and entering the adult world, it ranks low by portraying the weirdo right-wing militant gym teacher as a hero. In real life that dude will not have your back no matter what’s going on.
Not really a horror movie, not really a good movie, but at least it drives home an important message. If you’re a high school student, never be afraid to ask a dude “Wait, how old are you?”
Not really a lesson to be learned from this one, or even a plot really, even by David Lynch standards. You wanna be one of the kids who watches it though.
This movie will prepare high school freshmen for a horror they are sure to face at least once in the next four years: at some point, you are going to be encouraged to do a video project. You and your friends will get all excited, you’ll think you’re all being so funny, and then you get to the editing and realize just how hard it is to make a movie. It will be a disaster, the acting will be cringe, and some of it will be so problematic that you’ll need to scrub every copy if you ever want to run for office, but at the end of the day, it looks like everyone in this movie had fun doing it and so will you, so we rank it low.
Two important lessons here, number one: plagiarism works! You can take someone else’s original, fully formed idea, say “Groundhog Day,” do it incredibly worse, and people will say “This is actually kind of smart and good.” Second lesson: School is, for the most part, a seemingly endless repetitive nightmare. Good luck.
If you turn out to be a werewolf, and transforming into said werewolf makes you popular and good at sports, fuck that, just be yourself. That is the lesson of the movie “Teen Wolf,” and it’s not terribly useful to most of you, but there’s gotta be at least one kid out there going through “The change” (into a wolf specifically) that needs to hear it.
It’s your typical high school slasher movie with a twist—the killer only targets virgins! Not a whole lot to learn here but we guess it’s sort of good for kids to know that you don’t need genre literacy or more than one idea to make a whole movie.
This high school set found footage horror/superhero mashup teaches a timeless lesson—absolute power corrupts absolutely. Especially if that power is given to some freakin nerd. Look at Elon Musk.
The phenomenon of people living inside the walls and attics of stranger’s homes has been on the rise in recent years, or at least getting more attention on the internet. If you’re going to secretly live in someone’s house, doesn’t an off-campus dorm make the most sense? Strangers are already in and out of there all the time, keeping weird hours, people coming and going all hours of the night, you probably don’t even need to hide really just act like you know someone and whoever spots you in the kitchen will just shrug. If you’re living with a bunch of students maybe screen this movie and try to pitch some sort of safety rules.
Extracurricular clubs are a great way to find your tribe, and while the after-school anime club is unlikely to save your small town from Dracula, you’ll watch cool stuff and meet people who may be your friends for years to come. Plus if your shitty town ever is invaded by say a tentacle monster or an evil wizard in a school uniform or whatever, you’ll be the first kids they call.
This movie is a crash course for two of the biggest obstacles high school students will face, toxic friendships and really contrived dialogue.
The sooner you learn the cool older person who buys you beer and, hey, even lets you drink it at their house, maybe ISN’T that cool, the better off you will be.
Any given high school has a ton of local legends. A lot of them are bullshit ghost stories like “Yeah, some kid killed himself in the hall C bathroom and now there’s a ghost in there!” Some of them, however, like “The volleyball coach gets kinda handsy,” you’re going to want to pay attention to.
A poignant film with a lot of social commentary, but the main takeaway is that no matter what they do to mold you, condition you, and brainwash you into becoming a model American citizen, you’re going to get horny and become a monster and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it.
Fellas, if you’re a high school student who’s never gotten laid and some rich smokeshow lady is dead set on taking your virginity, she is at best dangerously unstable and at worst a vampire queen who wants to feast on you to retain her eternal youth. Either way, it won’t end well.
You wanna know the scariest thing about high school? Look in the mirror pal! That’s right it’s YOU! You with your GANGS, you with your prostitution drug cartels you run out of the basement at punk clubs, you with your random acts of violence and murder, despite your genius level intellect and piano prodigy skills, you are the FUTURE! WAKE UP CONSERVATIVE AMERICA!!!
If you’re about to go into high school and you already read The Hard Times, chances are pretty high you’re going to make some witchy friends, and that’s great. Just be on watch because every witchy clique has one member who wants to take things a little too far. Talking about cursing the math teacher is all well and good but once you see actual blood, even if it is just from a chicken, it’s time to stop hanging out with Tabitha.
When you’re a high school student, can you ever really trust anyone? As “Scream” will teach you, categorically no. There is danger around every corner, everyone is a suspect, and a ton of people want to take your virginity for reasons that are varying levels of nefarious. At least in movies, there are rules. Good luck kids!
