My tendency with this theme is to look to the past, to choose very old movies. I don’t know why exactly that is, beyond the fact that I just like old movies. But there is something about older English films that just feel British, more than modern ones do. But of course, Britain still has a large and lively film industry. So I did want to watch some modern British films in this series as well.

I more or less picked Slaughterhouse Rulez at random. I’d never heard of it before finding it on my streaming service. But it stars Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Michael Sheen (who I’ve very recently been thoroughly enjoying in the new season of Good Omens) and I’m always on board with those guys.

I want to say that it is like Harry Potter but without magic and with more monsters, but I don’t know if that’s fair. I mean it is like Harry Potter in that it is about a bunch of kids at a posh boarding school and there are things like houses and head boys, but I don’t know that this concept is exclusive to Harry Potter. Rather it feels very much a part of British culture.

Anyway, Finn Cole plays Donal Wallace, a working-class boy whose mother has found a way to get him into Slaughterhouse School, an exclusive boarding school. At first, he feels out of place since everyone seems to know each other and other are lots of strange rules, but he quickly makes a few friends, a few enemies and meets a pretty girl (Hermione Corfield).

But before it becomes a British John Hughes-style dramedy, some nasty creatures start killing people off. They seem to be coming from a giant sinkhole that was created by a fracking company working on school grounds (and sanctioned by the Headmaster (Michael Sheen)).

It is a perfectly enjoyable little horror comedy, that never really quite scares or makes me truly laugh. It is the type of film that after watching I said to myself, “that was nice” and then moved on to something else. There is a touch of political commentary with the fracking stuff, but it never goes very far with it.

Simon Pegg is one of the school professors who is rather preoccupied with his wife (played by Margot Robbie for some reason) who recently left him to work in some overseas, war-torn country.

Nick Frost is a former student who now heads a guerilla group in opposition to the fracking company who also sells drugs on the side.

It is funny, just not overly so, and the horror is well done, just not exactly terrifying. It is worth watching if you like that sort of thing, just keep your expectations manageable.