Piper review – Elizabeth Hurley dances a merry tune in cheesy rat-based folk horror

Hurley arrives in Pied Piper territory with her daughter to take a teaching job at a creepy private school. Soon enough the town’s infamous rodent problem starts being an issue

The premise for this horror exercise is a potent notion, one that might have yielded a chilling work of Mitteleuropean folk horror: the Pied Piper of Hamelin is a supernatural being still kicking around the German town, luring children to their deaths as punishment for parents’ sins. Unfortunately, the film-makers fluff the brief, with too much showing and telling and not enough simmering mystery. That said, the end result is so comically tawdry and silly you can’t but wonder if its all a bit of a tongue-in-cheek goof, a gag that Elizabeth Hurley at least seems to be in on, judging by her ripe, almost-winking performance. Let’s hope she had fun shooting it and got to keep some of the lush knitted jumpers her character wears throughout.

Hurley plays Liz Haines, a high school history teacher who arrives in Hamelin with her American-accented teenage daughter Amy (Mia Jenkins) to take a job at a local private school. Part of the deal is that mother and daughter get not only a free school place for Amy but also a medieval house to stay in. Later, it turns out to have been occupied by another teacher whose child we see killing himself in the opening scene. Soon Amy’s fingers are being nibbled by rats in the night, while other rodents bedevil Liz in the kitchen, scurrying about despite a colleague’s insistence that the town has no rats whatsoever.

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Piper review – Elizabeth Hurley dances a merry tune in cheesy rat-based folk horror

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