hat scares you?" asks Miss James (Derek), a college professor who teaches a psychology class about fear to a handful of students. It's two classes before the final, but it's clear that only a couple of the students have much interest in the subject matter.
Carl (Rinker), a nerdy-looking guy who's studying the criminal mind, needs a project for his final report. Miss James offers him a chance to help her research a book she's doing on a serial killer who killed 16 people in two separate incidents. The killer gathered up the victims alive and then killed them at one time. The killer's mother was never found, so it's impossible to know if he killed her or if she was his accomplice. Worse yet, due to a technicality, the killer was set free and no one knows where he is.
As the final approaches, two of the students nearly come to blows as the strange and angry Brian (Urich) taunts the resident jock Mark (Josh Holland). Miss James will have none of it, as she insists the most important thing is that "witnesses are never a good thing." She sets the final for late in
the evening due to "scheduling conflicts."
Strange things begin to happen and Mark turns up missing. As the students show up for the final, there's no sign of Mark or Miss James. The lights go out and suddenly Mark's girlfriend, Tiffany (Brigitta Dau), vanishes from the classroom. As the students set out by emergency lighting to try and get the lights back on, Brian goes off by himself. Carl and the others set out to find the missing people, but one by one people start to vanish, the phones don't work and they can't seem to get out of the building.
But is Miss James just teaching them a lesson, or is there really a killer on the loose?
Scary for all the wrong reasons
Horror 101, a two-hour original television movie from SCI FI, could also be called Horror Movies for Dummies, because it has all the classic elements of a horror movie, but on such a basic level there's little to be surprised about.
There's the awareness that a killer is on the loose, a group of people are trapped together, they begin to turn on each other, and then one by one they vanish. The big problem is that unless this is done really well with great humor (Scream) or with excessive craftsmanship (Halloween),
the results don't end up being that scary, surprising or interesting. And that's the problem with Horror 101. It's not funny or scary, and it just doesn't bring anything new to the genre.
The one thing the film has going for it is its bright and appealing young cast. Most notably, Urich manages a fair amount of menace as Mark, and Rinker gives the nerd a new spin as a fellow who is a little too interested in the criminal mind. Only Derek disappoints, with a very flat performance.
Producing scary stuff on the small screen has always been a challenge. Some might say it's due to the lack of the ability to show lots of violence and gore. The more likely cause is that this mediocre television movie just can't complete with the 10 o'clock news. Now that's really scary.
