DISTURBING BEHAVIOR * (R) (out of four)
Steve Clark: James Marsden Gavin Strick: Nick Stahl Rachel Wagner: Katie Holmes Dr. Caldicott: Bruce Greenwood Officer Cox: Steve Railsback
Directed by David Nutter. Written by Scott Rosenberg. Running time: 83 minutes. Rated R (for strong violence, sexuality, language, and drug content).
BY AARON MICHAELS
Disturbing Behavior is the newest teen horror film that desperately tries to milk a little more money from the crowd that liked Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Disturbing Behavior doesn't hold a candle to any of these films which in comparison deserve to be studied thoroughly by film historians and placed on the AFI list.
The plot of Disturbing Behavior is so disgusting it's almost unbearable to write it in the review. Steve Clark (James Marsden) and his family move from Chicago to get away from the personal demons of an older son who had committed suicide which we see in quick flashbacks. These quick flashbacks have absolutely no point and are only inserted to add gasoline to the fire that will be created later in Steve's mind.
The family moves to a little fishing town called Cradle Bay which is very reminiscent of the little fishing town the characters where terrorized in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Of course we must go through the 'I'm new here' scenes where Steve feels out of place. First day of school rolls along and Steve is introduced to the gothic, stoned teenagers Gavin Strick (Nick Stahl) and Rachel Wagner (Katie Holmes of WB's "Dawson Creek") who he becomes friends with.
Gavin has a theory that something's up with the popular kids at Cradle Bay High. They call themselves the Blue Ribbons. They are the jocks and cheerleaders who have bake sales and blood drives annually. Gavin witnesses a murder in an earlier scene and this starts his mind running. He believes that teachers and parents are mindwashing bad students to make everyone perfect. None of his goth friends believe his story and claim he was just "high". Could these parents be purifying the world? Who will be there next victim? You can only guess. You won't need to think hard.
Well the next 40 minutes is devoted to chases and body counts. Each scene is shot very dark with gloomy images and whispers everywhere. Blue Ribbon members mutilate people in large populated areas and are not noticed whatsoever.
Is this movie an entire lost cause. Almost. There is one character I liked quite a bit. William Sadler does a good job as the school's janitor who is looked on as the village idiot. Could he be more? Probably. He seems to be having a good time and plays his part very excited.
This horror film breaks a lot of the horror film rules that were defined by the modern day classics like "Halloween" and "Scream". They think that just showing a person being murdered is scary. What the above films do well is play with your mind. They don't believe the gorier the better.
"Hey! Producers! Leave us critics alone!"
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews