Summary
Run-of-the-mill stuff is given a jolt of catharsis thanks to the bullying theme, but a mixed message undermines the idea.
There’s something pretty creepy about the supernatural conceit of School Tales the Series Season 1 Episode 7. Apparently, in the old building of a high school, there’s an abandoned infirmary. And if you sit in the wheelchair in that dilapidated room, and turn your back to the door, the ghost of the school nurse will appear to grant you a wish. I wouldn’t be confident in the wish, to tell you the truth. But that’s entirely the point.
School Tales The Series Season 1 Episode 7 Recap
In its earlygoing, “Curse” is about justifying why someone would go to such extremes. Thus, we’re introduced to Korn, a student who is being relentlessly bullied by his peers (in any show about kids, the real-world stuff is always more horrifying than the supernatural, isn’t it?). His tormentors, A, Bom, and Mint, want to use him to ensure they pass their midterm exams, first by terrifying him into giving them the answers, and then, when the logistics of that plan don’t quite work out, by forcibly strapping him to the wheelchair in the old infirmary and instructing him to wish for their success.
You can see the problem with this plan, I’m sure. And Mint recognises it too. After a dressing-down from a vaguely sympathetic teacher who explains they’ll be held back a year if they flunk the exams, especially in light of their bullying, she suggests going to check on Korn in the old building. How else are they going to know if he made a wish for them? The boys talk her out of it, though, leaving Korn to fend for himself.
This is obviously social horror more than the supernatural kind, which is why we barely even get a glimpse of the nurse’s ghost other than flashes as she ambles around behind drapes and such. There is some creative use of shadow, but nothing would terrify anyone who has seen a horror movie or show at any point in their lives. But the nurse doesn’t hurt Korn — she grants his wish.
Korn flees the old building and legs it back to the main one, where A and Mint spot him. At the same time, some other kids discover Bom’s corpse. Korn laughingly reveals that he didn’t wish for them all to pass their exams, but for them all to die, and Bom was first on the chopping block — we see how the nurse telekinetically dropped a whirring drill through the top of his head in what is quite a nifty sequence, visually speaking.
What’s the meaning behind School Tales The Series Season 1 Episode 7?
Because we spent so long watching Korn get needlessly tormented, there’s a decent amount of catharsis in watching A and Mint get their comeuppance too. The problem Korn runs into is that this doesn’t stop him from getting bullied by all the other students. Now he has a taste for revenge, though, he sprints back to the infirmary and makes another wish, this time for everyone who torments him to die. But that’s a lot of people. As the nurse explains, she took nothing in return for the first three. The price now is one body part per death, and he’s already three fingers in arrears. As Korn fruitlessly tries to take his wish back, the nurse works her way through the 33 people who gave him grief, as Korn agonizingly rots away, piece by piece.
What’s the message here? Probably something about revenge coming with a cost, honestly, but in this context it does read a bit like “tell people you’re getting bullied and you’ll get messed up for it,” which is hardly a message I can support. Still, it was satisfying while it lasted.
What did you think of School Tales the Series Season 1 Episode 7? Comment below.
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