Tamara (2005)

“Sorry Mrs. Natolly.  Tamara wants you dead.” 20 August 2019

The Quick Pitch:  After being killed in prank gone wrong, wannabe witch Tamara returns from the grave to (1) seek revenge on those who bullied her and (2) find love with her English teacher. 

Watching Tamara, I was reminded of several other, better horror movies – specifically, Carrie, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Jennifer’s Body.  It’s not that Tamara is bad, but it’s not nearly as good as any of the other films I mentioned. It seems that for every good thing I could write about Tamara, there’s something equally bad.  I’ll cite three examples of what I’m talking about. First, take the acting – Jenna Dewan in the title role is quite good. She’s equally impressive as the meek, picked-on Tamara as she is the confident, sexy Tamara.  However, I can’t say the same about much of the rest of the cast. Some of the acting is downright painful to watch. 

Another example where good and bad aspects of the film negate each other is in the plot.  The revenge-from-the-grave storyline has been done to death. You can find examples going back to the earliest days of film.  Conversely, Tamara also features some really interesting plot elements. For example, using her new found powers, Tamara forces a girl who is obsessively concerned about her weight to actually gnaw on her own hands.  It’s pretty gross, but a nice touch. 

One last example I’ll cite are the death scenes.  There’s one death early on where Tamara forces a classmate to commit suicide on camera in front of the whole school.  If you’re squeamish, best look away. It’s difficult to watch. Compare that with the final death scene. I’m not going to go into detail and spoil the ending, but it’s pretty lame in comparison.

This is one of those cases where the good and bad pretty much balance each other out.  There are things I liked (some of the plot elements, some of the acting, and some of the death scenes – for example), but there were other things that didn’t really work for me (some of the plot elements, some of the acting, and some of the death scenes – for example).  As a result, a 5/10 seems about right.

5/10