Hell is a tween girl, I guess? Or, better yet, Hello God, It’s Me Zafreen (and my demon buddy). I mean, beware the girl in class who gets her period first… she’s probably possesed by SATAN!

Tiger Stripes is about an eleven year old girl in Malaysia who hits puberty hard. Most of her friends turn into mean girls and there are creeps with purple glowing eyes lurking in the trees. And she gets rashes and hair in weird places and zits. Puberty is hell.

Take out the purple-eyed tree climbers, some bad CGI, and some goofy practical makeup, and this is just a coming-of-age film about a poor girl who hit puberty before everyone else. Add that stuff back in and you get a vague, hand-waving horror movie that’s not particularly good at being scary.

Though it does have an exorcism that gets credit for being unlike any such scene in a film I’ve seen. More of a media personality than an exorcist and more of an annoyed tween than Pazuzu.

I don’t know much about Malaysia but given the full head to toe clothing the little girls wear, this film was likely scandalous in its home country. Hell, it’d be dicey in America too… little girls getting their periods freaks out the squares if Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret has anything to say about it. Google informs me that the Malaysian censors cut out huge chunks of the film to get a release… and the director disowned it. Good for her.

Which is all to say, hey, it’s a pretty decent depiction of first puberty and how it makes you a target. It’s only vaguely a horror… I mean, a girl’s body changes and sometimes she wants to eat raw chickens (rabid teenagers can’t abide a chicken). I’m not sure what the film ultimately is saying, but at least it had the courage to say it.

Score: 78