Tamara

TAMARA

A 2005 film in which a meek high school girl wants to have a romantic relationship with one of her teachers, Tamara is a flawed but entertaining story about revenge from beyond the grave.  The titular protagonist (who practices witchcraft) goes to a motel one night thinking her teacher (Bill Natolly) will be meeting her there, when in fact she’s been set up by some of her cruel peers.  The prank gets out of hand, Tamara lashes out and attacks her tormentors, and one of them shoves her in such a way that her head hits the corner of a table, and she dies.  The teens bury Tamara in the woods and vow to never speak of what transpired (I’m not sure what they did about that nasty blood stain on the motel carpet).  The next day, Tamara shows up at school dressed in an out-of-character sexy outfit and exudes a new confidence.  The teens who killed her conclude that they must have accidentally buried her alive.  Tamara (who has in fact magically returned from the dead) compels one of the conspirators to mutilate and ultimately kill himself on camera while the rest of the student body observes on the school’s TV system.  She sets out to exact revenge on the others while simultaneously attempting to seduce Mr. Natolly.  The film is worth looking at to see what occurs next. 

Jeffrey Reddick (who penned the first draft of the original Final Destination) wrote Tamara, and I admire him for creating unique horror fare even if his concepts don’t always work as well as they might.  In the case of Tamara, I was jolted out of the story in the third act (when Tamara chases some of the characters around a hospital) because the location seemed so deserted – not since the original Halloween 2 has a hospital on film been so totally devoid of patients and staff alike.  The tale’s setup felt over-long: Tamara dies around the thirty minute mark, leaving only just over an hour for the “revenge of the hero” section.  Still, Tamara is a fairly singular project with a memorable protagonist and some clever humor woven among the scares.  If you crave original horror in this day and age of constant remakes and sequels, Tamara is worth a look.