Down a Dark Hall

Down a Dark Hall eventually goes Down a Convoluted Tunnel, with some admittedly creepy but also just plain crazy sequences.

Rodrigo Cortés' mild supernatural mystery often feels like an incomplete genre exercise; one that reluctantly tiptoes around its "Suspiria"-for-teens premise.

This is a decent modern Gothic thriller handled with sufficient style and a straight face by genre ace Cortés.

The scares might not satisfy those old enough to vote, but it should provide mild chills for its target audience.

With each new element, "Down a Dark Hall" reveals itself, with improbable delight, to be genuinely strange - a movie in which viewers can pick their own pleasure, no two spectators having exactly the same experience.

Ultimately, Down a Dark Hall falls victim to familiar teen horror tropes: a brooding lead with a heart of gold, predictable jump scares, wincingly bad romantic tension, and obvious villains.

The over-the-top acting and unconvincing special effects, along with the lack of any true element of horror, make the film difficult to watch at times.

Duncan supplies an enjoyably bizarre reason for hellraising, and Cortes almost finds a way to sustain weirdness for 90 minutes.

This murky, muddled attempt at Gothic horror set in a school is pretty to look at, but gets an F in the subject of scares.

The mood is agreeably creepy but the plot grows increasingly silly.

Moody and creepy, this Gothic thriller is admirable in its effort to achieve subtle scares but ultimately too tame to truly thrill - though it does feature a reasonably satisfying finale.

Some stylish touches are undone by overwrought genre tropes and an abundance of supernatural nonsense.