Written by Old Bluffer 3rd Jun 2009

(Spoiler alert - this is a new film and well worth the price of a cinema ticket, so if you haven't seen it yet I'd advise you don't read on)

Alexis is one of the more interesting bullies, and is certainly the one that has the most depth.  Confident and popular, he's still not the type of loud, arrogant teen that his peers are, and he has an agreeable, self-deprecating charm that sees him get inside Justine's virginal knickers after a spectacularly short amount of time (although by his own account, he was only in them for a short amount of time too).  Even after this conquest of the school's Head Girl, he doesn't turn out to be an arsehole, and the two begin dating.

At around this time of course, Darren Mullet is on a rampage, killing all the bullies, and Alexis's success with Justine seals his fate as Numero Uno on Mullet's death list.

During the early killings, Justine manages to convince herself that she had nothing to do with Mullet's suicide. After all, she doesn't even remember the guy, so how could she be to blame?  OK, so Jason tells her that Mullet had a serious crush on her, and the suicide note seemed unfairly bitter about her - but she'd done nothing!

She also views Alexis through spectacles tinted rose by the first flush of love, and seems happy to absolve him of blame too.  However, she keeps hearing references to a website that the bullies used to get at Mullet, and her curiousity is piqued. Alexis tries his best to fob her off but in the end she insists on seeing it for herself.

Once she does, it becomes immediately clear that smiley boy Alexis was in no way just going along with Bradley and the other bullies, he was just as cruel as the rest of them. Whether taunting Mullet directly, providing camera work and sarcastic commentary for the videos, or hiding his victim's inhaler, when he's in a full blown asthma attack.

Horrified, Justine looks at him in disgust, and he tries to defend himself. He was sucked into the whole bullying thing by Bradley, and he was nowhere near as bad as him.  "No. You're worse" accuses Justine. "At least Bradley is honest about what he is."

There is even more damning evidence on the site though, this time relating to her.  For the first time, she sees how she completely blanked Mullet during his moment of desperate need.  Finally she gets at least a partial empathy with how she hurt Mullet.

Too late, Justine and Alexis realise that Kali's life is in danger, and arrive at the Art room to find both her and Jason's gruesome corpses.  Nobody else has discovered these bodies yet, meaning these two are on the crime scene, which is critical later on.

Mullet's master plan of revenge is now almost complete.  He bursts in on them and prepares to despatch Alexis.

Now at the very start of the film, Alexis was shown to be an utter coward when Bradley burst in on him and Justine, wearing a mask and wielding a chainsaw.  Shamed by this, he promises Justine "If it was for real, I'd protect you."

Well, it doesn't get much more real than a Darren Mullet attack, and amazingly, Alexis is true to his word. He steps in front of Justine and stabs Mullet hard in the chest with a screwdriver.  Unfortunately he may as well have flicked a piece of popcorn at his head, for all the effect it has, but it was still quite a courageous move, and it buys them scant moments to flee to the next room.

Mullet follows, now armed with a screwdriver, which he uses to pin Alexis's hand to the floor.  He then moves onto Justine, and begins to choke the life from her.

It is here that Mullet is stymied by the medical condition that blighted him in life. His chronic asthma begins to play up with the stress of strangling his beloved, and he pauses briefly to take a puff from his inhaler.  Seizing the chance, Justine grabs it and throws it over to Alexis, screaming at him to smash it.

Freeing himself of the screwdriver, Alexis proceeds to do just that, and soon all that remains of the inhaler are smithereens of plastic.  Starved of breath, Mullet begins to gasp and Alexis beats him to the floor in triumph. Mullet is almost defeated, but suddenly, underneath a chair, is a glorious sight - a pristine inhaler, filled with airway-clearing drugs.  Brilliantly, this is one of the inhalers that Alexis stole from Mullet in life and thought it would be amusing to hide!

A few puffs, and Mullet is back to full strength. He rams the screwdriver into Alexis's throat, and then, strangely, does nothing...

Justine rushes to her boyfriend's aid, and removes the screwdriver, getting covered in his blood.  She glares at Mullet in anguish and says, "You know what, they were right, you do look like f*cking Shrek!"

The police are now at the door, and Mullet vanishes without killing Justine.  It soon becomes clear why - the police see Justine covered in blood with a screwdriver at Alexis's dead throat.  She is also implicated by motive or proximity for all the other killings (apart from Marcus). Jez (and Jason) publicly humiliated her, she was the only one present in the swimming pool when Sophie died, Mullet planted her head girl badge at the crime scene of Tasha and Bradley (and she'd had a cat-fight with Tasha), and she was present in the Art Room for Jason and Kali's deaths.

She is taken away by the police, with the rest ofthe school looking on in accusatory disgust. She might try and appeal, but there is an enormous amount of forensic and circumstantial evidence against her.  And using the defence of "I didn't do it, I was framed by a fat asthmatic zombie who used to fancy me" is not going to be an easy defence!

So, this was Mullet's plan all along - he reserved the worst torment for the person who caused him the most pain, the girl he loved, Justine.



Old Bluffer's Thoughts

Thus ends a most enjoyable British movie. I hope you liked the write-ups as I had a lot of fun doing them.

The script was on the whole very sharp and genuinely funny. Some of the goth caricatures were a little too obvious (I mean, poking fun at goths is about as easy as it gets!), but that is a minor criticism.  The cast also did a great job, despite having lots of relatively new faces. Tuppence Middleton and Calvin Dean gave the standout performances in my opinion, and it was also nice to see Alex "Stormbreaker" Pettyfer take a really unlikeable role. [By the way, "Tuppence Middleton" has to be the single greatest British actress name in history!]

Darren Mullet is a great anti-hero of our time, and I think he'll prove to be a favourite cult character with horror afficienados. It was completely unfair what he did to poor Justine of course (not to mention Jason), but that is pretty much the point. It wasn't all that fair that he was victimised throughout his school days either, but life sucks for some people.

I would imagine Justine is well and truly screwed by the end of the film. Her only possible defence will be that she wasn't physically capable of overpowering the boys that died, but it's likely that the police will believe that she was in league with her boyfriend, Alexis, and turned on him at the end.

In the end, Justine was of course morally blameless for Mullet's suicide - but the fact is, a simple smile or friendly word would have saved his life.  Unattainably minxsome girls take note - be nice to the ugly geeks who stare at you adoringly - it doesn't cost anything and you may avert a violent zombie killing spree!