Tamara (Jenna Dewan) is a quiet, picked-on high school girl who writes for the local paper, lusts after her married English teacher Mr. Natolly (Michael Marsden), and has been dabbling in the witchcraft her deceased mother also took part in. Tamara generally keeps to herself and tries to lead as normal a teenage life as she can despite the aforementioned problems and her alcoholic, non-supportive father.

Things are about to change for her though as an article she's written for the school paper telling of steroid use by the football team gets under the skin of a handful of the jocks involved in the scandal. Before you can utter, Carrie rip-off, they vow to get back at Tamara and decide to stage an elaborate prank to humiliate her by pretending to be thee teacher she has a crush-on and tricking her to a local hotel. But things don't go as planned and their undeserving victim accidentally clips her head on the corner of a table and dies.

Rather than get into trouble, the group decides to not call the police and bury Tamara in a shallow grave. This turns out to be a huge mistake, however, when her interests in witchcraft help to bring her back from the grave as a skimpily dressed seductress with long, long legs and the power of persuasion over people. This leads to plenty of well staged revenge set pieces where Tamara plays people's hidden secrets against them (like the bloody moment involving a razor blade, when the bulimic girl suddenly wants to eat and eat a lot, and one pretty brutal moment involving a grease fryer), a few "close but not quite" tease moments from Dewan, and a finale that offers a handful of mild thrills and satisfying finish.

Like Decoys, this is another low-budget Canadian horror flick that actually manages to be surprisingly fun and entertaining to watch. The script by Jeffrey Reddick (who co-wrote the original Final Destination) may play on stereotypes and clichés but it also offers enough new stuff to never feel like a re-tread, plus it also manages to contain a few alright bits of humour and some pleasing death scenes. It also helps that the young cast handles their roles decently, with Dewan showing more chops than expected as our undead villainess, and that director Jeremy Haft doesn't take it too seriously while doing a fairly good job of staging the stalking and death scenes.

Tamara might not be a revelation or the most intelligent flick to come along, but it's a more than acceptable way to spend 94 minutes and it reminded me somewhat of 1987's Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II - and that's not a bad thing at all. (Chris Hartley, 2/3/06)

Directed By: Jeremy Haft.
Written By: Jeffrey Reddick.

Starring: Jenna Dewan, Matthew Marsden, Chad Faust, Claudette Mink.