Into The Dark: School Spirit is this generation’s version of The Breakfast Club
By Paul Zuniga
The August edition of Into The Dark recently debuted. Check out our review of School Spirit below.
From the get-go, Into The Dark: School Spirit appears to be a shot-for-shot of the 80s classic The Breakfast Club. Everything from the squad of rebellious teenagers to the inept school administrator is present. There are slight deviations but the character tropes are essentially the same. And while that may be frowned upon by some, it’s actually a good thing.
Warning! Spoilers for the latest episode of Into The Dark follow. Read on at your own discretion.
The reason School Spirit taking cues from an 80s classic is a pro instead of a con is that the movie shifts in tone at just the right time. When it looks like the entire episode is going to focus on teen drama, the killings begin. At that point, School Spirit goes from being a riff on The Breakfast Club to becoming a modernized take on the original Scream movie.
Don’t get us wrong, the writers in no way copied what others have down — they merely applied successful cinematic elements from the past to a story of their own. Mike Gan, Josh Miller, and Patrick Casey also put a signature spin on their episode of Into The Dark in a way that no one else has before.
The classic trope of high-school kids in detention sharing a cathartic experience has been utilized time and time again, but we don’t think any director or producer has ever transformed a teen drama into a slasher flick like this — at least until today.
There was, however, one problem with Into The Dark: School Spirit that perhaps can be attributed to misleading promotions: The insinuation of supernatural elements in the story.
If you’ve been following along with every episode of the Into The Dark up to this point, then you know some entries have been grounded in the real world while a few others took place in sci-fi universes. This has presented the difficult task of determining which is which.
In School Spirit’s case, the initial trailer featured dialogue which insinuated the ghost stories told would become physical manifestations that attack the students trapped in Helbrook High. It also didn’t help that a cloaked figure was looming in the background of several scenes, or that the individual in question was moving around like an apparition.
While that glaring problem took us by surprise, the August entry of Into The Dark still managed to deliver a spectacular episode of Hulu’s breakout horror series. Keep in mind that next month’s entry will be the last of Season 1. A second season is rumored to be in development, though no official confirmation has been made.
Into The Dark: School Spirit is currently streaming on Hulu. Pure premieres on September 6, 2019. For more on this Hulu Original, follow us on the Hulu Watcher Twitter Account @HuluWatcherFS or on the Hulu Watcher Facebook Page.
(Source: IMDB)