CAUTION: Possible plot spoilers present.
In the remote girl's boarding school of Lady Margaret Oaks, young student Louise Thompson is having an affair with the artist husband of the headmistress Veronica Van Huet. The affair is discovered but Veronica forgives Louise, inviting her to stay in the school over the holidays in order to work on school play that she had been setting up. At the same time, Veronica's husband, Matthew Van Huet is under increasing pressure to forge his artist father's signature on his own works in order to gain more funds for the school. But one day Matthew disappears without trace. Alone in the foreboding mansion & with only Veronica & her doctor friend for company, Louise begins to suspect that Matthew is probably dead & that Veronica is responsible.
Out of Bounds is a cheap but relatively classy British thriller that was made as sort of a British version of POISON IVY with a few touches of SINGLE WHITE FEMALE thrown in for narrative kicks. The film is directed by Merlin Ward & stars his wife Sophie as the "evil" headmistress.
The film is something of an obscure effort – copies of the film are hard to find & it hasn't been widely seen. But having said that, Out of Bounds is actually quite interesting in its own right. The script has clearly been written to accommodate a low budget – singular location for most of the running time; very few actors; little in the way of effects & so on. Ward does a reasonable job of conducting suspense on this shoestring budget & even gets in a few good twists, although the end revelation that George Asprey faked his death in order to get back at his wife is a little anticlimactic. The acting is good for the film's type, with Sophia Myles & Sophie Ward making a good team & Celia Imrie has a wonderfully polite but nasty underneath demeanor that will send shivers down your spine.
In the remote girl's boarding school of Lady Margaret Oaks, young student Louise Thompson is having an affair with the artist husband of the headmistress Veronica Van Huet. The affair is discovered but Veronica forgives Louise, inviting her to stay in the school over the holidays in order to work on school play that she had been setting up. At the same time, Veronica's husband, Matthew Van Huet is under increasing pressure to forge his artist father's signature on his own works in order to gain more funds for the school. But one day Matthew disappears without trace. Alone in the foreboding mansion & with only Veronica & her doctor friend for company, Louise begins to suspect that Matthew is probably dead & that Veronica is responsible.
Out of Bounds is a cheap but relatively classy British thriller that was made as sort of a British version of POISON IVY with a few touches of SINGLE WHITE FEMALE thrown in for narrative kicks. The film is directed by Merlin Ward & stars his wife Sophie as the "evil" headmistress.
The film is something of an obscure effort – copies of the film are hard to find & it hasn't been widely seen. But having said that, Out of Bounds is actually quite interesting in its own right. The script has clearly been written to accommodate a low budget – singular location for most of the running time; very few actors; little in the way of effects & so on. Ward does a reasonable job of conducting suspense on this shoestring budget & even gets in a few good twists, although the end revelation that George Asprey faked his death in order to get back at his wife is a little anticlimactic. The acting is good for the film's type, with Sophia Myles & Sophie Ward making a good team & Celia Imrie has a wonderfully polite but nasty underneath demeanor that will send shivers down your spine.