On a dark and stormy night, a seemingly innocent prank goes terribly wrong in writer/director Jud Cremata’s teen horror movie Let’s Scare Julie (2020). As a thriller, it’s a slow-burner that builds anticipation with tense character exchanges, confusion between what is a prank and what is supernatural happenings, and menace throughout the film. Lightly touching on loss, family/friendship dysfunction, loneliness, and bullying, the aesthetic simplicity of Let’s Scare Julie allows the emotion and terror of its narrative to take center stage.

Two sisters, Emma (Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson) and Lilly (Dakota Baccelli), become orphaned and are sent to live with their aunt, her alcoholic husband, and their teen daughter Taylor (Isabel May). One night, Taylor invites her friends over to meet them, and Emma quickly becomes acquainted with Taylor’s clique after they conduct a series of pranks on her, much to her annoyance. As the night goes on, an urban legend about the house across the street inspires the girls to concoct a prank for the house’s new residents, but when their prank goes awry, they find they have unintentionally drawn the attention of the ghost behind the urban legend, who proceeds to teach them a lesson regarding their pranks.

So far as I could tell, Let’s Scare Julie, at the very least, is a technical accomplishment because it looked as though the movie was done in a single take — I was checking throughout the film and was amazed how well blocked the film was, having the cameraman slowly become a part of the cast while dipping in and out of rooms and capturing (and hiding) just the right shots for events throughout the movie. There were some instances where I found the sound design needed work as I could not always make out the dialogue, especially during the frequent whispering between the girls, otherwise, the movie was technically seamless, and nearly flawlessly performed by its relatively small cast.

The camera stays with the central character, Emma, allowing director Jud Cremata to hide the monster, building anticipation to be all the more frightening. Let’s Scare Julie is not a found footage movie, but to me, it has a similar vibe to one, where the production quality is grittier and raw, and the acting seems more authentic. Sometimes, teen movies, whether horror or not, suffer in the dialogue department, but writer Jud Cremata took the time to create authentic characters, showing great character development layered within the exchanges — enough for me to care whether they lived or died.

Leading lady Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson as Emma gave a vulnerable and believable performance that carried this film; as the camera never leaves her vicinity, had she not been relatable and level headed (as far as horror movie characters go), the film would have felt forced and fell flat. This fresh, ghostly teen horror flick placed heart and horror into one smartly wrapped package that should be a nice gift for anyone willing to give it a watch.

7 out of 10