4/5 Freaky teacher
  by G's Mom (Dayton Ohio)
Ghost House movies, this is a good one. Another teacher that is a freak and the parents don't believe the students. Check it out.

4/5 Strange & Fun
  by Gary Young (Tucson, AZ USA)
I had seen a preview of "The Substitute" on another DVD and wasn't impressed. However, upon finding it cheap at a used bookstore I decided to give it a shot. I'm glad I did.
"The Substitute" is a fun & strange little piece of Sci-Fi that borrows elements from several other better known movies and blends them together to make something unique. There's no doubt to the kids in the film that something is a little off with their substitute teacher, but their parents are completely blind to it. If the film didn't have some bad language in it, it would be perfect for a younger audience who could definitely relate to the kids in the film. It still makes for solid entertainment for a slightly older crowd though.
Those viewers who need graphic violence and sex in their movies will be disappointed as "The Substitute" contains neither. Its strength lies in its seemingly familiar plotline that veers off into unexpected directions.

5/5 One of the most amazing films ever made
  by Magic Pink
I went into this movie knowing nothing about it and it's easily the best film I've seen all year and one of the best films ever. I cannot recommend it more highly; an absolute success on all counts. There simply is no low point to this amazing, hilarious, dark, sci-fi fairy tale. Make sure you watch it in the original Danish, the dub is awful.

5/5 Ghost House Underground serves up a real gem with The Substitute
  by Daniel Jolley (Shelby, North Carolina USA)
I couldn't help but worry when what I thought was a pure horror film (it certainly looked like one, and it is one of the Ghost House Underground films, after all) opened with the words "once upon a time." A somewhat confusing opening and lots of obviously bad dubbing (this is a Danish film) did little to reassure me. Once the "substitute" showed up, though, I quickly found myself being drawn into this quite unusual film. Let me assure you that this is a really weird movie - surreal, actually - and some people will undoubtedly hate it. As for me, I loved it. They should have stuck with the original Danish title, though - Vikaren - because that sounds so much cooler than The Substitute - and this is one seriously cool movie.

I think most of us loved substitute teachers when we were kids because it meant a free period of quiet reading or anything that didn't involve actual learning for that day. Of course, it's a different story when a regular teacher is going to be out for an extended period of time - but it's not like some strange woman is going to come in and terrorize the kids with extra-sensory powers and prepare them for a mass alien abduction. Unless you're a Danish kid going to the school portrayed in The Substitute, that is. Here, the new substitute reads the minds of the kids and uses that to begin terrorizing them from the moment she walks in (well, she makes a pencil stand up balanced on its tip first). It's especially hard for young Carl, who is already dealing with the recent horrific loss of his mother. Despite his outcast status among his classmates, he manages convince the others that something is seriously wrong with their new teacher. A suddenly clique-free class then comes together and discovers that Ms. Ulla (Paprika Steen) is actually an alien who is planning on taking all of the kids back to her home planet for some nefarious reason. Naturally, their parents believe none of their kids stories about the new teacher because Ms. Ulla is from the Education Ministry and she wants to take the class to Paris to show off all of their newly ingrained smarts (and because parents never believe their children about anything).

Have I mentioned how weird this movie is? As we are told at the beginning of the film, the alien who lands outside a chicken farm has come to earth to help her warlike people learn about love, and apparently the best way to do that is to space-nap a class of catty sixth graders. Speaking of chickens, they prove to be an integral part of the story. If you haven't guessed, there is a measure of dark comedy permeating this little gem of a film, and you will laugh. Paprika Steen is simply fantastic as Ms. Ulla, who is more than capable of humiliating a kid one minute and crying her eyes out for the benefit of the parents the next. The kids are great, too. So what if this is more science fiction than horror? It's still brilliant in its uniquely quirky way. Granted, it doesn't quite fit in alongside the other Ghost House Underground titles, yet it's probably my favorite of the bunch. If this is the kind of movie they're turning out in Denmark, I say we start important more Danish films right now.

3/5 Sci-fi from Sweden
  by eddip82000 (New York, N.Y.)
This was a good movie, not too fast and not too slow. It had an interesting plot. The children were smarter than the adults and this made
it a good movie