Sandcooler Picture "Carrie", only somehow make it into a teen slasher: that's pretty much what "Tamara" comes down to. Angels of vengeance usually work really well within the movie universe, and Tamara is no exception. She's fierce and cruel, but at the same time her evilness comes with a healthy side of dark humour. Her murders are just standard clichéd witch behaviour, but occasionally she takes a break from that to just kinda mess around with people for absolutely no reason but for laughs. I particularly liked Patrick and Shawn's fate, very unexpected and diabolically creative. There's also a fair amount of gore thrown around throughout this movie, which was kinda surprising. Blood and gore isn't a good reason to like a movie, but to me it did add a lot to the general nasty atmosphere. The fact that lead actress Jenna Dewan is pretty smoking hot helps the movie too I guess, I can't back that up, it just does. This movie was better than I had expected, actually pretty impressive for the standards of recent horror cinema.

Paul Andrews Tamara Riley (Jenna Dewan) is your average high school geek, she wears unflattering glasses, frumpy clothes & has just written a damming expose on the high school football team in which several big stars have been exposed as drug cheats. A lot of people dislike Tamara & have good reason to want to see her suffer, football ace Shawn (Bryan Clark) has been benched by the coach for the rest of the season over the drugs allegations & he will miss the opportunity to impress a major scout & he blames Tamara, as revenge Bryan & some of his mates humiliate Tamara & film it. When Tamara discovers what has happened there is a struggle & Tamara falls & dies after hitting her head on the side of a table. Bryan & his mates panic & decide to bury the body & tell no-one but the next day at school Tamara show's up & begins to take revenge on her killers...This American Canadian co-production was written by Jeremy Haft & isn't that bad to be honest with a few good moments & ideas but overall it doesn't really come across as anything that special, the plot about an accidental death & then a cover-up by a bunch of scared teens is right out of I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) with the whole female teen witchcraft angle is lifted from The Craft (1996) with a little supernatural horror thrown in there for good measure. My biggest problem is the familiarity of it all, the geeky kid who by some means becomes a stunner & gets her revenge, the teen slasher angle & the whole growing pains teen angst thing as well as a very sedate pace, it's over half an hour before Tamara gets killed & while this time is spent on developing her character we get the idea that she's picked on & doesn't have a very nice life quickly & you just end up saying to yourself get on with it. There are a couple of memorable moments like when Tamara tortures a guy by making him experience what it's like being buried alive, the character's are alright even if Natolly looks too young to be a teacher, it's never explained why Tamara kills the one guy but then only causes a girl to hallucinate her own death & the ending descends into predictable teen slasher mode with Tamara chasing people through the most deserted hospital in the US (are there like no other patients there?) but overall it's watchable if somewhat forgettable.This does actually look pretty good & there's a bit of gore although not that much, a guy is forced to cut off his own ear, cut out his own tongue & stick a knife in his own eyeball, there are worms seen in an open arm wound, there's some blood splatter, a guy is seen with bits of glass sticking out of his neck after being made to eat bottles & a guy has something stuck in his neck. There's no nudity or sex though. The film never really goes into the witchcraft behind Tamara's resurrection or even where she got the spell book from.Filmed in Winnipeg in Canada on a substantial budget of about $4,750,000 this looks good & has decent production values & if that budget is right then so it should. The acting is OK but I suspect the attractive cast were chosen for their looks rather than their acting ability.Tamara is an OK time waster that mixes supernatural horror, teen slasher & teen angst. You could do worse for sure but you could do better as well, worth a watch if you can pick it up cheap or catch it on telly for free.

bigbro308 For some reasons, the reviews do tend to be polarized on this movie. It's not the worst film ever made, but it's certainly not deserving of a standing ovation. It had its ups and its downs to me, and I'll try to lay them out as fairly as I can.Ups: 1. This may be a shallow observation, but I thought most of the lead actresses were pretty cute. Sad to admit it, but that makes it more watchable. I wouldn't mind seeing some of them in other roles. 2. I also liked that the ending wasn't as cliché as it might've been. Not that it was great, it just wasn't as bad as it could've been. I respect writers who don't only kill off the "bad" characters.Downs: 1. Tamara wasn't ugly in the slightest, she just dressed dorky. They could've at least had her wear glasses and switch to contacts, which is sort of standard fare for the "transformation into a hottie" thing. Hell, how hard is it to fake some acne scars?? 2. Some of the acting wasn't really top-notch. It wasn't all horrible or anything, but most of it wasn't great. 3. Biggest Problem: The "moral arc" of the movie was quite bent by my standards. I really, really didn't like how she lumped everyone together and sought vengeance on the most innocent of the people present. I mean, I felt that the characters that were the least involved got it the worst. It's as though the moral of the story is "being bullied and threatened into not reporting a crime is worse than committing a crime" and I 110% do not agree with that.Moreover, I don't agree with some of the judgments that she passed on people. Gonna punish someone for humiliating you and killing you?--go ahead, you've got the moral high ground there. But for having an eating disorder? That's something that you try to help a person through, not in the same galaxy as something like date rape.Mostly because of the last mentioned problem, I had a really had time getting into the movie. I mean, I have no problem sitting through a B-rate, somewhat trashy movie. But at least make a character that I can sort of cheer for as she acts out her vengeance, instead of someone that I quickly start to feel was so morally twisted that the "bad guys" might've done the world a service by killing her.

Samiam3 Tamara is pretty much a Carrie rip-off, even the poster art is almost identical. Whether it was intended to be original or not, I'm not sure, but with a few less clichés and a bit more character development, this could have been a film like May, smart and scary, and eccentric. Perhaps this film is a 'takes one to know one' kind of story. socially troubled girls, may find this emotional but everyone else will see Tamara as what it is, a sexy, but shallow horror movie. Tamara Riley becomes the most hated girl in school after she writes a news paper article which rats out a number of her school mates in a certain way. One night, a bunch of them play a nasty prank on her, but things go wrong and she is accidentally killed. In the panic, they bury her body in the woods, but somehow she comes back from the dead, more cunning and sexy than before, and with a mind for revenge.The trick to enjoying the movie is whether or not you feel engaged enough to root for the protagonist. She was done a major injustice but she is also doing injustice to others. The sex appeal of Tamara is really secondary. Tamara is nothing more or less than amusing in a twisted way, but if you want a similar movie that actually gets you thinking, watch May.