The first thing I wanted to do after watching Welcome Week: A College Horror Anthology (gonna call it just Welcome Week from here on) was congratulate the cast and crew for making it. Not that it’s a great film or anything; in fact, I can actually point out tons of flaws—bad acting being the primary one—but considering it’s mostly the work of amateurs, I would rate it pretty high. I also happen to enjoy the majority of it, especially the second segment. We’re going to talk about that, along with the other ones, and also how the main story ties everything together pretty neatly.
Spoilers Ahead
What happens in the movie?
On a quiet night, a masked killer—we can deduce it’s a woman—violently kills two boys on the street in a pretty standard slasher movie manner. The action then moves to Takaki Memorial University. Josh and Andrew—both of whom desired to be single occupants—end up as roommates. Josh is heartbroken thanks to his very recent breakup, while Andrew is carrying the burden of a dark family history (both Josh and us—the audience—don’t know about it initially). He had four siblings—all of whom strangely died in their first week of college. Quite naturally, Andrew’s mother didn’t want him to go to college. But Andrew wanted to, so he had to take military training (to protect and save himself from all sorts of danger, I suppose) before attending college. However, Andrew is smart enough not to mix with people, and he’s mostly keeping to himself. But Josh wants him to go to a frat party. He has met this girl, Claire, who invited him, and he promised that he would attend with his ‘maybe incel’ weird roommate. Andrew doesn’t want to go at all, but he ultimately gives in to Josh’s continuous pleading. So they reach Claire’s dorm building, and downstairs they meet Kevin. He’s Claire’s childhood friend who’s waiting for his girlfriend, Alice. Josh and Andrew go inside, meet Claire, and battle through the initial awkwardness.
Meanwhile, the masked killer arrives out of nowhere and attacks Kevin. Alice gets inside fine, but quite naturally, she doesn’t know where Kevin is. Andrew, being the smart one, asks her to check the location of his phone. As you’d expect, Kevin just happens to be right around the corner. So Alice goes, finds Kevin and expectedly screams; at the very same moment, the masked killer also finds her and starts doing her thing. Thanks to the scream, Andrew, Josh, and Claire rush to her. Andrew, thanks to his military training, sprints and reaches Alice in no time and starts fighting the killer right away. He doesn’t succeed, though, as the killer stabs him in the shoulder and makes an escape with Kevin – who’s still alive. Fortunately, he’s wearing a body-armor vest already. So now the onus is upon Josh and Andrew to find the killer on the loose and rescue Kevin while Claire waits with Alice until help arrives.
The rest of the movie follows Andrew and Josh around the campus while they find many obstacles in their path including the college authority suspecting Andrew thanks to his military training background. So not only do they have to find a killer, they also need to dodge campus security and not get caught. In the middle of such a tense situation, Andrew starts narrating what happened to his siblings to Josh, one by one.
Elias becomes fast food
The eldest Cross sibling, Ellias, arrives in college with all the enthusiasm in the world. He’s a student of film who livestreams everything and has the incessant urge to get famous on the internet. Thanks to his strange-as-hell roommate Damien, his livestreams instantly start getting popular. Sadly for Ellias, Damien is not just regular weird; he is, in fact, being possessed by the devil. There’s this sinister scheme of the college where, every ninety years or so, some students are sacrificed to the devil for consumption—in order to clear all the debts and stay afloat. Clearly, Ellias chose the wrong college to go to in the worst possible year. The story ends with his death being live streamed, although we don’t get to know what happened afterwards. The high point of this segment has to be a possessed Daniel asking Elias—his food (yeah, the devil does it literally)—to run fast, which makes him ‘fast food’ (yeah, I’m sure they did this on purpose). Fittingly enough, this one is called “Blood-Stream.”
Lucas, the unfortunate hero
Easily the best segment out of all the four (five, if we also consider the main story), this one got full “Contagion”—but in college. Medical student Lucas Cross goes to college all prepared, except for one thing over which he had no control: having a stupid roommate, Vince, who would go to a frat party and bring the infamous frat flu with him. Except it’s not a flu, but a rather deadly virus that Lucas’ teacher, Professor Gross (did they intentionally name him that?), explained in the class. He terms this as ‘Swells’ (that’s what the segment is called as well), and as he does this, Vince does every possible wrong thing inside the dorm while Lucas realizes that his roommate has caught something way worse than the flu. He rushes back to the room and saves Vince from collapsing just in time, but then we see two unidentified men in hazmat suits telling Lucas that he can’t go out of the building, as it is being quarantined. That’s the last we see of Lucas. A great feature-length college horror could be made out of this story, by the way, just saying.
Marie is a vessel
The strongest segment of Welcome Week is unfortunately followed by the weakest one. Not being able to handle the grief over losing your brothers like that is understandable, but running off to Eastern Europe is never a good thing. Nothing against anyone, but that part of the world is filled with shady things. Quite naturally, Marie had to come across cultist fanatics like Angus and Daphne, who are insane enough to poison and kill her for literally no valid reason. There’s a bit of needless mumbo-jumbo about dreams, reality, and Marie being a vessel (of what though?), which doesn’t matter in the end. The only good thing here is Marie also killing these two before her death. Just like the segment itself, they haven’t managed to be creative with the title either, so it’s just called “Freshers.”
Et tu, Brute, Alex?
The fourth Cross sibling, Evelyn, arrives at college with a lot of confidence. She is smart enough to avoid all the troubles and best the curse. Andrew keeps calling and warning her, but Evelyn seems to have things under her control. Unfortunately, that’s just on surface level. The moment you meet Alex, you realize how much off the rails this girl has gone—which is only normal considering what happened in her family. Alex is Evelyn’s imaginary friend, by the way, but an evil one, who convinces her to kill herself. Out of all four, Evelyn’s fate is the most heartbreaking one. Out of all the things in the world, she had to succumb to mental illness.
Who is the masked killer?
Coming back to the main story now, the masked killer’s identity is eventually revealed. The movie tries its hand at a big twist here, but it doesn’t land that well. The masked killer turns out to be none other than Dean Victoria Pierce’s twin sister. She is evil incarnate and has done some really nasty stuff so far, including literally scraping the skin off Kevin’s upper body. Andrew and Josh don’t at all have it easy with her, but ultimately they do manage to beat her. Andrew loses one of his arms, though, in the process, and in what should be considered the most satisfying scene of Welcome Week, Josh stabs and kills the killer with that amputated hand of Andrew—the sharp piece of wood stuck in it, if I have to be more specific. Anyway, Andrew does beat the curse, which is all that matters.
Welcome Week ends with Josh and Andrew chilling after such a chaotic night, discussing their future. Josh is excited about his chances with Claire, while Andrew plans to take a gap year. They’re going to remain in contact, though, and most likely best friends for the rest of their lives.
