School Stories The Series is an anthology horror series On Netflix based on a popular comic book in which different directors take on terrifying stories of blood and terror at various Thai schools.
Consider kids in uniforms, people hanging out at lockers, and at least one kid who is being bullied for being a little odd.
A teenager stands in a schoolyard in the opening shot. “Someone once said that life is like the hands of a clock,” says a VoiceOver. “They always return to the same spot, doing the same thing.”
The Plot: In the first episode, “7 AM,” pupils feel their classroom is cursed. According to mythology, every morning at 7 a.m., a book for a certain class is inscribed on the whiteboard. If a student does not have the book when class begins at 8 a.m., the “ghosts” who haunt the classroom will kill him or her.
That person will also be removed from everyone’s memories. This is demonstrated when a student named Wittaya (Ratchanon Aungsiriswat) forgets to bring a book and suffers the consequence. The next day, he’s still on the class roster, but no one knows who he is.
For whatever reason, a student named Q (Kay Lertsittichai) has been assigned to be in the room at 7 a.m. to photograph the board and post it in a class text chain.
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But Q is sick of being controlled by the other students, who want him to report to them at 7 a.m. so they can plan what to bring. Vaan (Chanwut Kwanmongkolcharden) and Not are particularly obnoxious classmates (Nutchapan Paramacharoenroj). Tan is the only one who is protecting him (Panisara Rikulsurakan),.
Q is also troubled by the ghost (Pemika Ratsameechawalit), but she does not murder him for some reason. The more pressure he feels from his classmates, the less likely he is to assist them. It all comes to a head when Alan (Wichai Saefant) accuses the other students of taking his math book.
What shows will it make you think of? Think American Horror Stories, but with stories set in other schools.
Our Opinion: Horror anthologies can deliver scary stories even when the filmmakers only have an episode’s worth of time to do so. However, they often suffer from a lack of specifics. That’s what we witnessed with School Tales The Series, and the lack of detail was enough to keep us from enjoying the stories.
The “7 AM” episode doesn’t actually explain all that much. We know Q is the son of a crooked politician, but we’re not sure why he was chosen to read the board at 7 a.m. and send it to the rest of the class. We have no notion why the spirit is haunting him. We also don’t understand why Tan is the only one defending him. Is she fond of him? Is she taking advantage of him?
So, if the tale will be lacking in details, there should be some decent scares. The scares in the first episode are, at best, modest, owing to what appears to be a low budget.
We’d want to claim that the episode provided insight into the human condition, but we can’t say with certainty because whatever message director James Thanadol was trying to express was lost when the details were cut out of the plot.
Parting Shot: We hear a news broadcast about killings in that classroom, which reveals what may have truly occurred.
“Are you screwing him?” is the most Pilot-y line. Tan is not asked about Q. It’s worth noting that the term “fuck” appears elsewhere in the episode but not about actual sex.