Tormented

In director Jon Wright's slick feature debut, a bullied schoolboy returns from the dead to take violent revenge on the classmates who drove him to suicide. But is the "zombie ghost" real or just a figment of the guilty students' consciences? Wright offers a cynical British slant on glossy American high-school horrors such as Carrie and The Faculty, and is aided by a referential script from Stephen Prentice that's full of sarcastic wit and cruel humour. Alex Pettyfer (Stormbreaker) stands out among the good-looking young cast that also features alumni from TV's Skins and Grange Hill. The tit-for-tat retribution deaths ingeniously geared around playground urban myths (pencils up the nose, eyes flicked out with towels) make this smartly satirical morality tale a scary but diverting experience.