A cruel prank enacted between the mean girls of a private boarding school and their male gym teacher on a pupil called Kathy ends in disaster as she is run over and left in a coma. Through the power of her mind, her vengeful spirit possesses another girl called Eva who joins the school and infiltrates the group of mean girls. It’s then that she reaps her revenge on each of the girls and their sports teacher.

This is Lucio Fulci does Carrie but with a paranormal twist. It’s interesting to see the great director hone and harness his talents to meet the genre conventions of the ‘teen revenge’ horror sub-genre.

The kills are effective (the death by snails is wonderfully absurd and pure giallo) and the mood captured is symptomatic of the genre at large but directed to a superior standard than other more generic genre entries.

I also loved the fact that when Eva is bumping someone off, the heart monitor next to the comatose Kathy’s bed starts to go haywire. A nice touch.

If I had rented this is the 80’s I would have been more than satisfied by what I had seen. Another sign that Fulci successfully adhered to the horror of the day- he was quite restrained with the gore and Aenigma was passed uncut by the BBFC of the day. Whilst this was classified as an 18 in the 80’s, it was later downgraded to a certificate 15 years later.

3.5 out of 5 stars