5ive Girls

I gotta say, I love a schlock horror film. Nothing better than a piece of entertaining AV that wallows in primal fear and lots of gore. Now, every guy loves girls in school uniform (and I'm not talking about those crappy ones you probably went to school in - I'm talking about the "proper" school uniform, all tartan minis and white buttonup shirts) and if you add that to a horror film...can it be bad? Well 5ive Girls does just that, and is it crap?
Let's get the stupid stuff out of the way first. In some ways either the director or the writer is playing out a bit of a fantasy with this movie. We have five hot girls in school uniforms, who are stripped to their underwear and searched on arrival by the stern headmistress with serious lesbian overtones (she's more than happy to grope the odd boob), and said headmistress later spanks one over her table. One of the girls is a lesbian, there is a gratuitious bath sequence...really, the wet dream is all there. But once that is done and out of the way, the movie is actually not that bad.
Ron Perlman puts in a rather against-type performance as a priest and does quite a nice job of it. The priest is a strange character and there are lots of things that are left hinted at, but ultimately unsaid in the movie. The suggestion is that this priest used to shag his students (if not all, then the sweet and pure Elizabeth at the beginning of the movie that is the lynchpin for the plot). He seems to be on a path of redemption and believes he must obey the stern headmistress in order to achieve this.
Enter our five girls with unique gifts - sweet, blonde telekenetic Alex; butch, lesbian healer Mara; blind second-sight Cecilia; suicidal Wiccan Connie and token black intangible Lara (at least I think that's their names). Obviously they all hate each other to begin with, and only Alex believes that there is something weird going in the school, but when Alex takes a spanking for Mara, they all see the ghostly girl in the corridors (welcome back Elizabeth) and all decide to find out what is going on.
The movie actually has some really cool ideas at its core, and develops them well, and the ending is surprisingly unpredictable, if not more than a little depressing. The identity of the headmistress is signposted, but the audience won't really pick it up until the movie is ready for us to, and that is exactly how it should be.
If I had one complaint, it would be something that is relatively common in most movies, and that is, a really nice relationship develops between Alex and Mara, but although Mara kisses her, Alex won't have any of it. Movies seem to have a bit of a thing against a normal lesbian relationship developing, and moreso if it's the heroine, and even moreso if it's initially stated she is straight. No straight woman will ever develop a relationship with another woman, no matter how natural it seems, and that's a shame, because it would have made for an even bitter-sweet-er ending.
I was prepared to believe this movie would be utter shit, but to my surprise I actually enjoyed it immensely.
"A-"