[Film Review] Eating Miss Campbell (2022)

Troma films are something you either do or don’t get. The long-running independent B-movie studio’s films have a reputation for being cheap, obnoxiously trashy, and self-referential to a fault, but they also carry with them a great deal of hand-made charm; sometimes, when you can see a film’s rough edges, you can also see the love put into it more clearly than ever.

As a writer who is predisposed to loving trash, as well as someone who has first-hand experience of the close-knit teamwork that goes into making a Troma production, I lean far more towards the side of people who “do” get Troma films – and indeed, many others do, with titles like The Toxic Avenger (1984) and Class of Nuke ‘Em High (1986) being regarded as veritable cult classics.

Directed by Sheffield-based filmmaker Liam Regan, and a pseudo-sequel to his directorial debut My Bloody Banjo (2015), Eating Miss Campbell (2022) is the latest in Troma’s long run of schlocky bad-taste B-horror comedy joints. A pastiche of the blackly comic “mean girl” high-school pictures of the ‘80s and ‘90s, the plot follows Beth Conner (Book of Monsters star Lyndsey Craine), a self-destructive goth high-school student with a penchant for Deadpool-style fourth wall-breaks. In typically outrageous and provocative Troma fashion, Beth’s goal is to win her school’s “Binge and Purge” eating contest, the prize of which is a loaded handgun; in Beth’s mind, death is the only escape from her cartoonishly hellish world full of bullies, movie clichés, predatory education staff and wannabe spree-shooters. In the midst of all this appears the titular Miss Campbell (the feature film debut of Australian actress Lala Barlow), a new teacher transferred from America, who takes great interest in Beth – and not just in the typical inappropriate teacher-student manner, as her pupil’s recently-awakened taste for human flesh comes in handy when disposing of fresh bodies from a series of gruesome campus killings. If that’s a lot to take in, we’re only just getting started.

As you’ll probably be able to tell from the prior paragraph, Eating Miss Campbell is, by intention, one of those films which people will either love or hate in equal measure. Director Regan is clearly a fan of the cult practical-FX horror of the ‘80s and knows his audience well – the film is a “Where’s Wally” of classic video-store horror references, to the point that you’ll have to pause the film to catch all of them. In fact, the only thing which truly gives away that this isn’t a legitimate ‘90s Troma flick is the surprising level of production value for a clearly low-budget independent movie; on a technical level, it’s a very well-made and entertainingly designed film, with colorful costumes and bursts of creative camerawork, not to mention the aforementioned inclusion of practical blood and guts which are sure to please most genre fans.

The issue is, beyond looks and the occasional fun performance (most notably lead Craine), Eating Miss Campbell just doesn’t really come together or amount to all that much. As a non-conformist counter-culture satire of the increasingly dark state of our world, juggling trigger-warning-worthy topics including school shootings, teen suicide and #MeToo-era sexual abuse revelations, its bite isn’t strong enough to break skin because the film doesn’t take enough time to focus on each individual issue; beyond acknowledgements that these issues exist, often in typically vulgar Troma fashion, the point to addressing them is often lost in a whirlwind of samey “everything’s fucked” nihilism. By the end, you’ll notice that there isn’t really any reason presented for Beth not to take her own life, and even though I’m aware it’s the aim of the film to be cynical and bleak in its view of the frankly terrifying state of the world, I wonder how much this would have got to me if I was in a more vulnerable state of mind. The thing is, some of the social commentary, such as the different gendered perspectives on sexual abuse in regards to Miss Campbell taking advantage of Beth as opposed to the other teachers at the school, does come full circle – and I wonder, despite this being first and foremost a silly, schlocky comedy, if the film would have been more successful if it devoted more time to exploring each social issue to its full potential and tying everything together.

The thing is, I get what Liam Regan and crew were going for here, and I want so badly to like it. The north of England, as with most things up here where I live, is practically barren of horror content, with perhaps one genre film from the entire region getting a release every two or three years – and I even believe that the tone of Eating Miss Campbell has its origins partly in the neglect of the north by the U.K. government, especially during the chaos and terror of the COVID-19 pandemic at its peak. I want to love this film so badly, but at the end of the day, I realise that the laughs rarely arrived, the shocks lacked in their audacious potential, and by the end the whole experience felt a little empty.

Of course, Eating Miss Campbell will have its audience – in fact, I highly suspect that the film would play well in cinemas, and to the horror convention crowds that it is so obviously made to be seen as part of. Films aren’t easy to make, and regardless of my distinct dislike of Eating Miss Campbell, I’m glad that the effort put into it will be appreciated by someone out there. Unfortunately, that someone isn’t me, but who knows? It could be you.

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