Whether or not Tamara was conceived as a cinematic parody is truly beyond my scope of reasoning at this point. I'm fairly certain that the filmmakers intended for this piece to be taken with a grain of utmost sincerity, but I'm at a place now in which I really just can't tell anymore. Either way, Tamara is at her finest hour, a short skirt wearin' bra bustin' smoking hot chick out with a vengeance. Sounds great, right? Sure, but in the end both Tamara and her filmic namesake are nothing more than a luke warm tease.

Like most deliciously demonic vixens, Tamara starts out as a frumpy outcast, complete with ponytail and baggy overalls. And just like most cinematic frumpy outcasts, we know immediately that there's a smokin' hot demonic vixen underneath all that there frumpiness.

Ho-Hum.

So what kind of a mess has Tamara gotten herself into? Where does one begin? For starters, she's contributed to an expose in the school paper that has outed the local sportsters as steroid users. Nice one Tamara, now you're really asking for it. When the team catches wind of the fact that Tamara has a schoolgirl crush for Mr. Natolly (played by Matthew Marsden - and really, the only teacher in the school we ever see), they decide to use this info to their advantage.

They lure Tamara to a seedy hotel, somehow manage to convince her that Mr. Natolly is in the shower and that she should strip down to her bra and panties (?) and lie there waiting. This is also the first taste of Tamara's hotness. Like we didn't know she was hiding something(s) under those overalls. Bada Bing! All the while, a group of jocks and misfits (who really wouldn't even be breathing the same air as each other at a real high school) view the entire sordid affair in the next room on closed circuit television. Yeah, I'm buying this.

So what do YOU think happens next?

Tamara is let in on the little joke, and there's a terrible 'accident' causing Tamara to drop dead. Blah, blah, blah, the out of control teens now have to bury the body and never speak of this incident again (sound familiar?). Only problem, is, Tamara does indeed make it back into school the next day, but now she's all sexified and confident. What the group of teenage pranksters/murderers didn't know is that Tamara was just one ingredient away from completing her latest spell. An ingredient she didn't have the courage to spill on her own...her blood. She's alive! Alive! Living again and hotter than ever, Tamara sets out to exact her own brand of vicious (and it is pretty damn vicious) revenge on those who have 'wronged' her. Oh sweet delicious irony! And there's only 30 minutes left in the film! Better act fast Tamara!

I'm not being smart just for the sake of being smart. OK, maybe I am just a bit. But rightfully so. And I don't feel as if I need to drop a laundry list of films that Tamara plays off of, you should be able to decipher this one simply from the above description. But Tamara is just that, and inconsistent mixture of caricatures from previous horror films. Wouldn't be so bad if these characters actually had something interesting to do (or at least say) this time around...but they don't. The entire first act feels like a set up. And I know, it's 'supposed' to be a set up, but it doesn't necessarily have to feel like a set up. But it does. The fault here lies on the writing. That being said, without an ounce of originality (or even cleverness) from the story, and a group of flat, unlikable stereotypes, what's there to grasp onto? Nothing much.

However, once TAMARA gets rolling, and the bitch has finally come back, the gruesomeness comes right along with it. What I did appreciate was the serious dip in tone the film takes (basically from dumb to dumber) and Jenna Dewan's 'interesting' performance as the title character. In your face irony abounds as Tamara enforces death by vomiting and sports studs into homosexuality. And that's just for starters. One poor schlep is forced to maim and kill himself by cutting off an ear, tongue and gouge an eye...in front of the entire school! Classy! It's ironic and I don't even know why? The film takes a mostly unexpected and mean spirited turn during its final act. though these few fleeting (and at times, oddly inappropriate) moments of bloodletting are barely enough to save this bore of a film. Tamara, we hardly knew ye.

Video quality is about what one would expect. A solid anamorphic treatment with an adequate stereo surround audio track. Extras include a feature commentary with director Jeremy Haft and writer Jeffrey Reddick and a few Lions Gate trailers. Tamara, you should have stayed buried.