Die eiskalte Clique

The In Crowd is a great teen thriller. The movie is about Adrien, a strange girl who gets a job at a posh country club, when she meets Brittany, a pretty, rich, popular girl who is the leader of 'The In Crowd.' Brittany invites Adrien to hang out with her and her friends and everything is going well at first until things go bad and Brittany turns nasty. I thought most of the cast played there parts well and even though as the movie went on you tend to know what is going to happen, the movie is still enjoyable to watch. This is definitely recommended for people who enjoy teen thrillers as this is a really good one.

All the girls in this film slither around like snakes (or feral felines moving in for the kill), and Lori Heuring, the main girl, looks like a deranged cross between Madonna and Jewel (with her twisted little smile and semi-crazed eyes), and the guys are either drunk, stupid or a dazed combination of the two. And these are some of the GOOD POINTS of the movie! High camp at its most pleasurable.

I remember watching this movie on pay per view back in 2001, I remember liking it because an attractive woman was a serial killer. I had long forgotten about this film until I caught it on HBO a few weeks ago, After watching this film for the first time in 11 years I never knew how lifeless the actors and actresses were and how predictable the plot is. The story was interesting it was about a girl named Adrien who was just released from a mental hospital to work as a housekeeper at a country club/resort type place, where young, beautiful college kids lay around in the sun, play tennis, etc. She meets Brittany Hodges or actually more like saves her, when Brittany tries to fake like she drowned. So Adrien and Brittany become friends, and some strange things happen at the club. One of Brittany's so-called "friends" warns Adrien to go away, and to leave the huge mystery that happened a year ago alone, but Adrien knows something's up. Brittany's games are a little too much to handle sometimes. And after learning about Adrien's "history" she seduces Adrien's therapist while wearing Adrien's dress, then kills the therapist at a party later, and then Adrien goes to jail because they think she was the one who had sex with him, and killed him. It could have been a much better movie had the script really been tweaked, but tweaked it was not so good this is not.

I saw this DVD last night and it was okay, kinda like I Know What You Did At the Mental Hospital Last Summer. But when it was over I was playing around with the special features and brought up the second audio track with a running commentary by Susan Ward and Lori Heuring. For 90 minutes these two talked about hair styles, dresses, breastages, sweating, fake Cosmopolitans, toenail polish, and whatever else entered their minds. I was rolling on the floor. So if you want to see a mediocre thriller turned into an hilarious comedy, get the DVD, go to special features, and be prepared to laugh your butt off for an hour and a half.

Sloppy, bad movie. But, and it's a big but, it is a curious glimpse of how mind-bogglingly oblivious some people can be to how lucky they are, of how treacherous young women can be when it comes to their territory, of how stupid young men can be, of how a social group can be seen as responsible for the abuses of one individual within that group, especially when that group is the one in power.

But, and this is another big but, there are far more satisfying explorations of such topics, that offer something beyond prurience.

Too bad, because I have been hopeful of Mary Lambert ever since Pet Sematary which, though not a highwater mark in any genre, did explore in a gratifying way how deep people's needs and wants can run, and how that can sometimes manifest in absolute and utter resentment within and between the sexes.

It also had a neat sense of humor underlying it all, which does not always balance well in a horror flick.

Come on, Mary, where's the good stuff?