Teen Suspense / Mystery
2003 / 106 minutes
RATING: 7/10

Bullies at Rogers High School are all getting deathly sick. Is this the work of Abel Frye’s ghost, a student who committed suicide ten years earlier? The Veritas Project, a family of investigators, is brought in to uncover the truth and they quickly find things are not at all as they appear to be.

If you were going to judge this movie by its cover you would probably dismiss it as some weird supernatural thriller, but the villains in this story turn out to be familiar foes. At its core this is a movie about bullies and the bullied, about cliques and trying to belong. This is campy, for sure, but could still be an interesting one to watch with your teens and discuss.

Cautions

That said, Hangman’s Curse begins with a student’s suicide and delves into the practice of witchcraft so this clearly isn’t suitable for anyone under 10. In fact, parents should really preview this before watching it with their kids.

This has been billed as “Christian horror” and if you can’t deal with spiders, you really should give this a miss. The tagline is: “Watch your locker. Watch your back. Watch your soul” and that just about sums up why this film is going to be too much for many viewers – we just aren’t expecting a Christian film that’ll make you jump.

In some countries this has been restricted to 16+, though I’d say that might be more because folks rate anything with bullying (or cigarettes) rather severely, as compared to what they do with sexuality or language.

Conclusion

Horror, suspense, and more than a little cheese – whatever you want to call it, you haven’t seen a Christian movie like this before.

Based on a Frank Peretti teen novel of the same name, Hangman’s Curse is a Christian film that manages to get us thinking, at least a little. It’s got some humor too, and it gets its anti-bullying message across crystal clear but in such a campy way that it isn’t all that preachy.

To get a good feel for it, check out the trailer below.