Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
It’s common for high schoolers to craft elaborate urban legends surrounding their student body. Even my own high school had one: Gravity Hill, a story where a school bus of students met their demise at the bottom of a hill. Now, if you put your car in neutral, your car will roll up the hill, apparently pushed by the ghosts of the dead.
These school tales are obviously just stories meant to spook others for fun. After all, there’s no such thing as ghosts, right?
But what if some of those urban legends aren’t as mythical as they seem? After all, legends have to originate somehow.
And in School Tales the Series, a Thai horror show dramatizing school-based urban legends, those legends are treated as not only real, but deadly.
Each episode follows a new cast of characters as they encounter the malevolent entities behind their school stories, such as the nurse who is able to grant you any wish you desire (which in no way has any negative consequences) or the ghost teacher who kills any student who doesn’t bring the right schoolbook (and conveniently causes all the other students to forget that the victim existed).
The show is a gory mess. The students intertwined in these stories tend to suffer horrifically violent consequences for their curiosities. People are torn from the inside-out or have their legs sawed off. People are attacked by demonic entities, typically ending up with more blood outside their bodies than inside. A brief scene reveals one student was raped. We also see decapitation, and a girl with a ravenous appetite has the urge to eat a preborn baby. And, of course, there’s a whole lot of demonic possession and spiritual warfare.
If this show has any semblance of value, it’s that it serves as a reminder that nothing good can ever come from inviting and meddling with the demonic—in fact, God has specifically forbidden it (Deut. 18:9-14). But that’s a poor justification for the horrific content viewers will endure in this show.
Put simply, keep your school focused on division, not the demonic.
Kind student Q arrives to school early each day to protect his classmates from a curse they don’t believe is real. But when Q begins threatening to stop protecting them, they aren’t as confident in their beliefs.
In the title sequence, we see frightening drawings of ghosts, along with violence and blood. A student discusses getting an exorcist.
A boy is attacked and killed by a malevolent ghost, and his bloody corpse is dragged down the hallway, leaving a blood trail behind. A blood-covered hand reaches for Q from behind, and a ghost stalks him in a couple jump scare moments. Q has a vision where his classmates all gruesomely stab their hands with their pencils, creating sickening bloody holes. Q punches another student in the face.
There’s more violence, too. A couple of students are choked by a ghost. A ghost partially rips a student’s head off. Blood covers a window as a result of unseen gruesome violence. A person is revealed to have committed suicide (implied to be a result of the students’ cruel behavior).
A boy and girl allude to sex, and the girl mentions having sex with a couple of the male students.
The f-word is used seven times, and the s-word is used 10 times. “H—” is heard seven times. We also hear many instances of “a–” and “d–n.” “P-ss” is used twice. There’s one instance of “jeez.”
A mysterious website grants a student named Aim supernatural beauty, but she soon discovers that it comes with a horrific cost.
Aim’s computer becomes possessed. She drinks a magical potion that instantly makes her more physically attractive. Aim frantically pulls a string out of her neck, slicing her throat open. However, the wound is closed by strange black tentacles that sprout from the wound before supernaturally closing it up. Aim accidentally tears another girl’s fingernail off, and the girl rips the nail off again after it is put back on.
Aim slurps blood from rags, and she steals a maggot-filled cat carcass to eat as well. Aim also eats a frog. A guard believes an unconscious girl is drunk, and he touches her leg. However, he is attacked, and when he tries to escape, his fingers are visibly severed by a door. It is implied that he is eaten. A girl feels the urge to eat a woman’s preborn baby. A girl attacks Aim.
Aim forcefully scratches her nails against a table. She later bites hard enough into the wooden table to make an indent. Because of these instances, her fingers and gums begin bleeding.
We hear one instance of the “f-word,” and six uses of the “s-word.” “H—” is used six times. We also hear “d–n” and “b–ch” used occasionally.
[Spoiler Warning] We discover that Aim is the host for a parasitic spirit called a Krasue, a malevolent flesh-eating entity. Aim is turned into a “penanggalan,” which looks like Aim’s disembodied head with her internal organs trailing behind her.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
An elf mage contemplates on connection and regret as she watches her human friends grow old and pass away.
