Sexcrimes

Good picture and sound quality, well cast, colours are strong and clear and the outdoor scenes are bathed in sunlight, skin tones look natural and not too bright. A playfully piano score and some pop music makes up the soundtrack.

Denise Richards & Neve Cambell did a good job in their roles. Richards plays a shallow split beauty, a good character for her, she's not convicting anyone as a nuclear scientist. Bill Murray adds a touch of comic relief. The film is a bit of a deconstruction of a fictional rich shallow community in the USA. A web of greed, corruption, conspiracy and lies quickly unravels. Neve Cambell was great playing a totally different character to Scream a year before. However comparing her figure to Denise Richards, Cambell does look a bit short and squat when they're both next to each other but I suppose the cinematographer couldn't do much about that. The ending is a bit dumb too, and the overuse of twists starts to make it feel very one note.

Wild Things is a cult classic film of the late 1990's due to several things. First the film seems to be known for its twists and turns (most of which are unpredictable- several foreshadowing occurs with a lot attention to detail to be had), then there's its famous pool scene involving Denise Richards and Neve Campbell.

The film is relatively slow paced and not too engaging in its first half (about 50 minutes or so) then around once the first major reveal is shown, everything picks up (the pacing and plot), it become more intriguing and overall engaging. We want to see what is going to happen next.

Due to its twists and turns, those are what elevates the film from being relatively subpar. Wild Things is a serious drama dealing with a serious topic (rape case and allegations) yet the manner everything unfolds is somewhat trashy and in an MTV type style (this appears to be the appeal). The acting all around is respectable and convincing. "Not everyone is as they appear".

Overall not exactly a great film but it's unpredictability in the second half keeps you guessing and engaged.

In Blue Bay's elite beach communities and into the murky waters of the Everglades, you would expect nothing beyond this venture until a guidance counselor (Matt Dillon) is accused of raping two high school students (Neve Campbell and Denise Richards). While they are two detectives on the cast (Kevin Bacon and Daphne Rubin-Vega), they find out there's more than meets the eye in the mystery of deceit, sex and greed.

Directed by John Mc Naughton (Herny:Portrait of a Serial Killer, Lansky, Normal Life) made an entertaining trashy noir that has an unique blend of sex, suspense, comedy and a twisted story. An terrific cast makes things enjoyable, which included:Theresa Russell, Robert Wagner and Bill Murray. This film wasn't much of a hit, when it was first released in the spring of 1998. But it turned into a cult hit on video.

The Unrated DVD has an sharp anamorphic Widescreen (2.35:1) transfer and an good Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. The Unrated DVD adds seven minutes of additional footage, which it has some good moments...especially during the end credits and the characters are more fleshed-out in the Unrated DVD. "Wild Things" has an good moody music score by George S. Clinton (Austin Powers Trilogy) and striking camera work by Jeffery L. Kimball (Jacob's Ladder, Stigmata, True Romance) are one of the highlights of this guilty pleasure film. Bacon is also the film's executive producer. Murray is a hoot in his minor role as Dillon's lawyer. Written by Stephen Peters. Panavision. (****/*****).

As my general comment, Wild Things is a slick and fun thriller, but that's comes from my second appreciation for it. My first experience with it is so dizzy and makes a headache to me. The plot, ala Hitchcock flicks, is so complicated. I have no enough satisfaction on it, so I decide to give it one more chance. Well, this time, after understanding the plot structure, make me more relax and fun to enjoy it. Therefore, my recommendation is, better watch it two times.

7/10

During the very limited theatrical run that Wild Things recieved here (I think it was gone in about three weeks), a lot of the reviews and publicity created the impression that this was a soap opera sex thriller. I guess that's an easy approach to take when summing this film up, since its two female leads featured in Party Of Five and episodes of Doogie Howser (man what an awful show that was), not to mention that one of the male leads would be doing well to act his way out of a wet paper bag. The problem with that is that it is just too easy, and easy answer is exactly the sort of thing that this film goes out of its way to avoid. It is not trying to be a modern Hitchcock, it is not trying to be another Basic Instinct, it is just trying to tell a story.

The story, such as it is, seems to revolve around Blue Bay High School, the town it is located in, and its snobby, high-income elite, at least in the first reel. We are introduced to all four of the characters who will figure prominently in the story to come during a lecture to the students in their senior year. There's Sam the guidance counsellor, Ray the corrupt policeman, Kelly the daughter of the wealthiest real estate mogul in town, and Suzie the girl from the caravan park across town. All four of these characters have secrets they'd rather not share with any other inhabitant of the town, but that all comes apart when Kelly accuses Sam of raping her. Suzie corroborates her story at first, but then we get our first inkling that things are not all they seem, through the efforts of Bill Murray in one of his best cameos ever. The whole thing is seemingly a conspiracy between Sam, Suzie, and Kelly, but we are never shown whose idea it is until the very end.

This next passage will ruin a key surprise the film has in store, so don't read it if you haven't seen it. Unless things have radically changed in this regard during the last ten years, psychologists and other such professionals do not tell test subjects exactly what their IQ is. Even if Suzie or her mother did know exactly, this whole point is delivered with such sledgehammer force that it almost utterly ruins the subtle, slow buildup that the rest of the film exhibited. Were they just running out of money when it came time to film this spot and just decided to go with the quickest, simplest thing they could do? It would have been much more effective and satisfying if the ugly cop (I forget the name) had just spent five or ten minutes going through whatever Suzie had left behind on her run to the Carribean. Summing up this plot point in fifteen seconds was an exceptionally bad move.

Overall, however, you can't really go wrong with this film for an evening's entertainment. It doesn't feel the need to talk down at its audience, it doesn't resort to excess simplicity to make itself understood (except for the aforementioned ending), it just tells a story and tells it reasonably well. It is also another great example of DVD's utter superiority, especially during the threesome scene. When this part of the film is shown in its proper aspect ratio, you can make out every character and certain little details I'm sure that Denise Richards would appreciate not having available to horny teenage boys in a freezable and zoomable format. When was the last time you zoomed in on an actress' boobs with a VHS cassette, assuming they were left in frame after some jerk with an editing console chopped it down to fit those garbage 4:3 screens?