Down a Dark Hall

This supernatural thriller is just campy and creepy enough to entertain young teens who are interested in ghost stories. Generation X and older viewers who remember Duncan's book may wonder how the writers managed to maintain the isolation the girls felt when the setting was updated to current (read: phone/internet-heavy) times, but Madame Duret keeps phones under lock and key and requires the girls do old-school library research without computers. Robb and the other young actresses, particularly Moroles as angry Veronica, Russell as Ashley the suddenly unstoppable poet, and Fuhrman as blossoming mathematician Izzy, do a fine job conveying how off-putting the school's eerieness is -- especially in the dark.

The French-accented Thurman is delightfully campy, as is Rebecca Front as Blackwood's housekeeper/cook/disciplinarian Mrs. Olonsky. The frights are surprisingly real in a few scenes, even though the ending is somewhat more tragic -- and less satisfying -- than audiences may be used to in the genre. Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés has a knack for depicting the macabre, and while the subject matter of ghoulish happenings in ominous old estates isn't original, it's still the sort of fright that teens will enjoy experiencing together.