Film Review: THE PRANK: A Predictable Teen Horror-Comedy With Some Campy Charm [SXSW 2022]

The Prank Review

The Prank (2022) Film Review from the 29th Annual South By Southwest Film Festival, a movie directed by Maureen Bharoocha, starring Rita Moreno, Connor Kalopsis, Ramona Young, Keith David, Kate Flannery, Meredith Salenger, Jonathan Kimmel, Nathan Janak, Betsy Sodaro, Ahmed Bharoocha, Talia Jackson, Armani Jackson, Romel De Silva, Roni Akurati, Frank Scozzari, Lauren Knutti, and Pablo Ramos.

My fellow millennials: can any of you remember back to your ‘90s-era elementary school classrooms with the bookshelves in their reading corners and seeing them adorned with a bunch of kid-friendly “scary” books like the Bailey School Kids or Goosebumps or Louis Sachar’s Wayside series – all of which you might never actually read because, like me, you were a bit of a wuss, but the covers had enough weird detail to creep you out and haunt your overactive imagination but in, like, a kind of fun way?

Maybe that’s too esoteric of a comparison but I think Maureen Bharoocha might sympathize with it, as her film The Prank feels very much inspired by that silly childish blend of offbeat horror-comedy sentiments. Except in her case she fast-forwarded the setting to high school, and instead of the whole “My Teacher is a Werewolf” angle or whatever other supernatural entity was in vogue in that ‘90s moment it’s just straight-up “My Teacher is a Serial Killer” (you know, to really play to the true-crime hook that the directness of our modern age demands).

Ben (Connor Kalopsis) – the straight-edge, college-bound do-gooder – is wracked over his teacher Mrs. Wheeler’s (Rita Moreno) cold-blooded decision to flunk his entire AP Physics class unless a recent test-cheater comes forward. He vents about his now-doomed college applications in confidence to Tanner (Ramona Young), his mellow slacktivist best friend, hoping for nothing more than a sympathetic ear. However, Tanner takes his musings a bit too seriously and a bit too far, and, using the recent disappearances of some of their fellow classmates as “proof”, she cooks up a theory on how Mrs. Wheeler killed them all – after holding illicit affairs with them, of course!

Complete with fabricated social media posts and fake news galore via deepfakes and deep-web meddling, Tanner’s stories spread like wildfire and send their SoCal community into an uproar. Tensions heighten between Mrs. Wheeler and the school at-large, as well as between Ben and his own conscience. Sooner or later something’s going to break, but whatever and whenever it does, Ben, Tanner, Mrs. Wheeler, and the whole school won’t be prepared for the results.

The Prank very obviously posits two clear conclusions, with little surprise in store regardless of which one is chosen. Most of the runtime is spent simply waiting to see which path Bharoocha will take it down. It’s not particularly sharp in its construct but it is very silly, and Bharoocha – along with her writing duo Rebecca Flinn-White and Zak White – lean into a hyperbolic atmosphere of high-school hijinks to invoke an intriguing sense of modernized mild camp.

Its cast is where The Prank finds most of its charm. While Moreno might take most critics’ focus (and rightfully so, to a degree, as the 90-year-old EGOT really chews the scenery with an intimidating sense of vitality), Kalopsis and Young shouldn’t be overlooked. Like with the rest of the script their scenes are sometimes bumpy with shoehorned indie-film quirkiness, but the two do share a strong sense of comedic chemistry that propels the film along. Keith David has a blast as the deceptively jovial principal intimidated by Wheeler’s dark energy; The Office regular Kate Flannery has some moments as a crass lunch lady; Jonathan Kimmel plays his apathetic janitor character with a sense of hound-dog downtroddenness; and Nathan Janak plays the Always Online school newspaper reporter-slash-rumor mill churner, sardonically named Phillip Marlow as a nod to the gumshoe of yore.

Like its lead character The Prank is a bit too much of a try-hard, but Bharoocha and her cast keep it afloat with their chemistry and general incredulity. If this is a whacked-out version of an afterschool special, you might as well go ahead and tune in.

Rating: 6/10

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