I haven’t written one in a while, but I asked for a suggestion last night at the show and I’ll be damned if I let this one slip by too! I won’t lie, this ENTIRE movie is a rip of. A retelling if you will. Sort of. Just not as good because it’s me. With that I give you:
The Picnic Table
There is a school official speaking to two parents. She, Mrs Appleby, is the head of a near by all female boarding school in South Dakota and is telling the parents not to worry. Their daughter, Sara, has been in trouble a lot recently at her public school and this is the best way to go. That Joan Lindsay Boarding School is the best in the country, their graduates go on to do great things and to trust her. The conversation is being interspersed with shots of Sara in her room packing. She thinks about jumping out the windows and running away but sees the school van outside with a driver still there. She has to leave everything that can be used to contact anyone else behind, her computer, phone, the only thing electronic she can take with her is her watch. Everything else will be provided for her. Sara comes down the stairs with a suitcase, looks at her parents who get up to come and say goodbye to her, but Sara just walks out the door. Mrs Appleby follows her and they ride in the school van to a remote boarding school, surrounded by beautiful nothingness.
Sara arrives and meets her roommate Edith, a quiet girl who is happy to have a roommate. She takes to Sara quickly, though Sara is in no mood. Edith shows Sara around the grounds, the cafeteria, the laundromat, where all of the classrooms are, warns her about Appleby and her nature to drink and become aggressively angry. She shows Sara a few of the teachers rooms as well: Mrs McCaw, the mathematics teacher whom all of the ‘inmates,’ as they refer to themselves, love, Miss Portiers, the most recent addition to the school, a spanish teacher and gorgeous by model standards, and Miss Lumier, the suck up to Appleby and history teacher. Edith introduces Sara to a few of the other students as well, Marion, Irma and Miranda, who Sara immediately becomes infatuated with.
Sara starts to follow Miranda around, draws pictures of her, writes about her in her journal, she even tells Edith about it. Edith is jealous of the relationship that Sara wants to have with Miranda, but doesn’t have any feels like that for Sara. She just wants someone to want to be around her all the time, regardless of who it is.
As the semester rolls on Mrs McCaw and Miss Portiers decided to take a few of the students with the best grades, which happen to be Edith, Miranda, Marion and Irma, on a trip out for a nice lunch at the picnic grounds near the Weir Rocks. When they arrive Mrs McCaw sees that her watch has stopped at exactly noon, and the rest of the group notices the same thing on their watches. They sit at the picnic table there and eat lunch when the girls decide they want to climb around on the rocks. They lay on top of the rocks bathing in the sun and fall asleep. When they wake up the all, except Edith who is still asleep, seem to be sleepwalking to a cavernesque formation in the rocks they hadn’t noticed before. Edith wakes just in time to see them disappear and starts to shout at them. She runs down to get the teachers and tells them what happened. They all go up searching for the girls but can no longer find the entrance to the cave Edith had been talking about, and there is no sign of the girls either. They split up to look around the grounds, and at the end of everything only Edith and Miss Portiers return.
They head back to the school late and there is much commotion about what has happened over the next few weeks. The police are involved but find nothing at the rocks and there is no foul play suspected. There is a massive investigation and people in nearby communities are in an outrage. No one can comprehend what has happened and the mystery surrounding it has people talking in the supernatural.
Mrs Appleby starts to drink more and more, and is seen at all times of the day to be a belligerent drunk.
Edith hasn’t said a word in days, Sara is distraught and is trying to get Edith to say something. Edith wakes up in the middle of the night screaming on a daily basis. There is a memorial at the school that neither Edith nor Sara attend because neither one feels the girls are dead.
At Mrs Appleby’s request Miss Lumier heads to the rocks to check it out one night when all of the police have left for the day. She inspects everything she can but finds nothing before slipping and falling off of the tallest rock, hitting her head on the way down. She is discovered the next morning by the police. The townspeople are even more furious with the school now and Mrs Appleby is now public enemy number one to any and all locals.
Edith has to be taken to a mental hospital and Sara is left alone at the school. She is overly disobedient and Mrs Appleby has had enough with her. Mrs Appleby calls Sara to her office one night telling her that her parents have not paid the tuition for this semester and she will have to leave. They have tried to contact them but there has been no luck. They have tried every number and have even called extended family, none of whom answer. Appleby tells Sara to pack her bags as she is being transferred to a military academy in the morning.
When Miss Lumier comes to talk to Mrs Appleby about Sara’s recent troubles at school and her parents not paying tuition, Appleby tells her that she took care of it and that Sara has already left the school and went to her grandparents. That she was picked up earlier in the night and won’t be causing them trouble anymore.
The next morning Sara is discovered murdered in her dormitory and Mrs Appleby is nowhere to be found. The school van is tipped over and crashed in a near by river, but no bodies were found int he wreck or nearby.
THE END
Yeah, that was just Picnic At Hanging Rock. Sort of.