Rue's Nightmare at Boarding School
17 years ago Courtney (Amber Borycki/Sara Rue) was doing well at the Douglas Academy boarding school till the day that her best friend Jane (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) was discovered dead having committed suicide in a store room at the end of the hall. But having now made her name writing a novel inspired by her time at the Academy Courtney finds herself back there when she is offered a teaching position. Already on medication for panic attacks, Courtney finds herself living just down the hall from the room where her friend died which unsettles her and things are made even worse by Laurel (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) a student who looks strangely like Jane. It leads to some strange encounters where Courtney thinks she is seeing Jane's ghost as she starts to search for an explanation.
Technically "Nightmare at the End of the Hall" is a horror movie where we have this element of maybe something supernatural is going on whilst also suggesting there may be some foul play as well. But "Nightmare at the End of the Hall" is also a made for TV movie and rather being about unsettling visuals is supposed to be all about the atmosphere of whether what Courtney encounters on her return to Douglas Academy is real or all in her head. There is also supposed to be some added mystery to all this as well surrounding why Laurel looks just like Jane. The trouble is that whilst it is supposed to be this "Nightmare at the End of the Hall" is all so ordinary that it rarely grabs your attention, lacking the flare to get you and keep you interested.
Basically what I am saying is that "Nightmare at the End of the Hall" feels every ounce a made for TV movie. It has that look of being made relatively quickly, cheaply and probably could have been good if it had more time and money spent on it, allowing the director to explore things more creatively. In the end whilst "Nightmare at the End of the Hall" features various mysteries from what is happening to Courtney now, why Laurel looks like Jane and what happened in the past which caused Jane to kill herself it struggles to keep you involved and caring to want to know the answers to any of these questions.
Aside from that well "Nightmare at the End of the Hall" features a lot of close ups of Sara Rue and I do mean a lot which in fairness Rue is beautiful but it gets too much. And the camera spends so much time on Sara Rue that the other characters never really get a chance to form, to become interesting enough to keep us interested.
What this all boils down to is that "Nightmare at the End of the Hall" ends up a less than spectacular, in fact it is a down right ordinary made for TV horror movie. It had the potential to be good but with the feeling of being churned out on a tight budget and time frame "Nightmare at the End of the Hall" never really works.
