The movie The Substitute, which is part of the Ghost House Underground collection, is not to be confused with the 1996 Tom Berenger movie or its sequels. This is a Danish film released this year and collected as part of an eight-movie horror film grab bag. The film stars aging Danish film star Paprika Steen at the blonde substitute teacher of the film’s title.

More kitschy SF flick than pure horror film the movie opens with some gobbledygook about another planet finding Earth that didn’t know how to love, and it was humanity’s capacity to love that drew them here. Of course, there’s very little loving done in the story that follows. When Steen appears as a substitute teacher, her class of students sense there’s something freaky-deaky about her right away; of course, the parents don’t see it and she somehow rises above suspicion for much of the film, even though she never does anything as innocent as playing with dollhouses.

On the upside, the film is relatively clean on the language front and low on the gore factor, relying on more of a building suspense than blood-n-guts. On the down side, the final act is pure hokum, the English dub job is haphazard at best and painfully out-of-synch at times, and the film as a whole is not very spooky at all.