The Story:
Louise (Sophia Myles) is away at the creepy Lady Margaret Oakes School for Girls, isolated in the English countryside. And it only gets creepier when all the other students go away on holiday and she stays behind, under the guise of studying for exams. Actually, she wants to stay close to American art teacher Matthew (George Asprey), who is married to headmistress Veronica (Sophie Ward), and sleeping with his student. Soon, the two get caught, and headmistress Veronica is not happy. It appears that she kills Matthew in a fit of rage. But when Louise tries to find him, Veronica insists he has gone away for awhile, and asks Louise to stay, because she blames Matthew for cheating on her, and not Louise. Plus, she needs Louise around to study for a school play they are both starring in (huh? Student and headmistress?). But Louise is convinced he is dead and that Veronica buried him in the yard, and that she wants to either keep her around to kill her, or to drive her crazy. Louise begins hearing voices in the night, calling her name. She sees things. She creeps up and down the school halls. And Veronica just keeps acting weirder and weirder. Is she a lunatic, or is Louise the one going insane?

The melodrama hits like an episode of All My Children in the first half hour of the movie as we get to see the relationship between Louise and Michael. But finally, after Michael disappears, a hint of intrigue and suspense starts to unfold. Problem is, it just never goes anywhere. Louise walks in circles around the school trying to find evidence that something is not kosher, but nothing ever comes of it. And although there are only about four realized characters in the movie, a new one gets thrown in every now and then to create some sort of whodunit confusion. And boy was I confused. This doctor lady who is into Matthew's art comes around, and for a while, I thought she was supposed to be Matthew's mother, but then I decided she wasn't. Then this little girl stopped in for a visit, and I pretty much couldn't follow here deal either—I thought she was Veronica and Matthew's daughter. And two more men and another woman jumped into the end scenario, and I was pretty much clueless as to where they came from and how they could all of a sudden be such integral parts of the story. Question is, did this movie come across as a convoluted mess because I wasn't following it closely enough, or was it so convoluted that there was no way for me to follow it? I'll never know, because I couldn't bear to ever sit through it again to try and figure it out. It's not really worth the effort, believe me. Oh, and by the way, it's not a ghost story.

The DVD

Video:
Ouch. This movie looks like it was transferred from a video tape. It appears to be presented in anamorphic 1:85:1. The picture is grainy, pixilated, and washed out while suffering from a yellow tint and grayish blacks, as well as a soft, blurry image.

Sound:
Not so hot movie, terrible picture quality, yet, the 2.0 stereo audio track wasn't so bad. Clean sound, clear dialogue, nice right/left separation, and good use of subwoofer.

Extras:
Let me say for starters that there was something very wrong with this menu, problem being, whenever I hit the MENU button on my remote, it was recognized as the ENTER button, so I kept getting kicked right into the movie. I would have to stop the movie, remove the disc, and put it back in to jump to a different option on the menu. And those options consisted of:

CHAPTER SELECT--with 29 breaks.

INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR—who mentions that this movie is nothing like The Sixth Sense, but that's one of his favorite films. Guess that's why the misleading copy was on the DVD case. Sneaky marketers.

DELETED SCENES—each one is introduced by the producer. The sound and video for these clips are atrocious.

OUT-TAKES—a few goofs by the actors—including one actor who gets pissed off by an onscreen baby who won't stop crying. The baby was removed from the scene…

All three features above run in one shot, and the time for all totals about 10 minutes.

Final Thoughts:
Out of Bounds tries to be a pulse-pounding suspense mystery about a young girl locked away in a school with her psycho headmistress. Unfortunately, this film has no pulse.