Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #117: Ghost Graduation (2012).

High school teacher Modesto (Raul Arevalo) would certainly identify with the movie The Sixth Sense. Ever since his own school days, particularly a very embarrassing incident at a school dance with a girl, he's been able to see dead people. Naturally, this has cost him big money with therapists and has made it impossible for him to hold employment down. Somehow, though, he's just been hired to teach again at yet another new school, and is assigned to educate five students who've turned its prestigious halls into ones of horror. His mission is to help them pass their outstanding subjects and finally graduate but you guessed it: they all died in a horrible accident twenty years ago. There's Tina (Alexandra Jimenez), Dani (Alex Maruny), Angela (Anna Castillo), Marivi (Andrea Duro) and Pinfloy (Javier Bodalo), the one who's perpetually drunk because he died in that state. Modesto develops sympathy for and faith in them, but he will only get them over the line if he can bring them to control their cynical, rebellious attitudes and raging libidos - and that's a huge "if."

I can only liken Ghost Graduation to a Spanish hybrid of The Breakfast Club and American Pie, if both of those had supernatural elements; the kids all represent a different clique and it's quite salacious. Nonetheless, it's a concoction that feels genuinely fresh and unforced in its efforts to be cool. Working from Cristobal Garrido and Adolfo Valor's amusing and well-plotted screenplay, Javier Ruiz Caldera directs it with a sharp eye for the science of joke-telling and teen movie pacing, invoking very suitable soundtrack selections (namely Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart) to remind us of the characters' eras and perhaps even our own, alongside maintaining the energy. He also uses voyeuristic, wild photography and editing to reflect and echo the mischievous old habits Modesto has to finally undo in his charges. The cast all delightful, too, especially Arevalo as the browbeaten protagonist and Bodalo as the wild child who we sense wasn't much tamer when he was sober and living.

Of course, I won't tell you if these ghost kids finally graduate. But I will tell you, as a horror comedy with laughs, spookiness and skin galore, Ghost Graduation, passes with flying colours.