The Skulls II

Wow, was this movie not worth seeing. After the first Skulls, I was excited to see the second one. What a let down. The sequel has nearly the same story line as the first one except with lesser known actors. Definitely not worth the rental fees on this one.

**SPOILERS** Being tapped by "The Skulls" to be inducted into their secret bone-head society is something that every young collage student in this unnamed Ivy League school has been dreaming of and young Ryan Sommers, Robin Dunne, is one of the lucky few who's been chosen. Instead of taking his role seriously as an up and coming Skull Ryan pulls off a joke on the "Skulls" during one of their secret ceremonies that. This bone-head prank lands him and his "Skull Soulmate" Jeff Colby, Christopher Ralph, on the Skull Sh*t-list and has Ryan and Jeff doing toothbrush duty at the "Tombs", the Skulls headquarters, attic.

Hearing some noise Ryan notices, outside the attic window Skull member Matt "Hutch" Hutchinson, Aaron Ashmore, fooling around with the captain of the collages Womans Lacrosse Team Dianna Rollins, Margot Gagnon, and after getting good and drunk she loses her balance and fall off the roof. It's then when all hell breaks loose with top and senior members of the Skulls moving heaven and earth to keep Dianna's death from going public and implicating their secret society; which no one is supposed to know even exists.

There's a lot of huffing and puffing and nothing else as Ryan is put through the ringer in an effort to first quite and then later terminate him to keep this incident from reaching the newspapers and exposing the mysterious Skulls in the most unflattering way.

It's hinted in the movie, with references to the first Skulls film, that killing is nothing new and surprising with the Skulls. So why are they so panic-stricken now when with their total control of the media police doctors lawyers as well as local and state politicians to cover-up of Dianna's death!

We have instead of a powerful society totally controlling Ryan and later his turn-coat brother Greg, James Gallarders, having to go all-out to shut them up before they spill the beans on them and possibly exposing their secret society. Even the evidence of Dianna's death that was covered up by the local coroner Dr. Sprague (Simon Reynolds), who faked it up to be a traffic accident, is so shabbily hidden that a schoolboy could have found and stolen it. Dr. Sprangue wasn't that effective either in hiding his report on Dianna's death by leaving his office opened as he was checking out the latest, and most well-developed, female students for the towns collage next semesters Anatomy class.

Poor Ryan loses his up-tight and scheming girlfriend Ali, Ashley Cafagana-Tesoro, who only loved him because he was a Skull and someone who can open doors for her in the world of power politics. As soon as he wasn't Ali threw Ryan out of her dorm and her life and hooked up with Hutch who killed Dianna. Ali later even threatened to press charges against a confused Ryan for giving her a shinier on her left eye! Something she got from tickling Ryan not him purposely belting her.

In the end all the dirty laundry about the Skulls comes out in the wash due to Ryan and his new girlfriend and Ali's dorm-mate Kelly, Lindy Booth. With the not now so secret secret organization facing criminal charges in Dianna's, as well as who knows how many others, death they get their big guns out as they gather together in the Skulls secret "War Room". There they decide to put an end to all this shenanigans once in for all by kicking out the person who they feel is the reason for all this bad publicity they've been getting lately.

As usual the skulls screw up again, in trying to protect themselves and the future of the secret Skull society by dumping on the very person who would have saved them all this embarrassment. The person who tried t keep the all-too-normal and clear thinking, for the Skulls, Ryan from being taped into their lame-brain society in the first place.

The premise of the Skulls and it's sequel is that we are looking at the inner workings of one of America's (fictional) secret societies.

Unfortunately because it is a sequel it will be compared to the original.

This film has the same premise as the first film. A young college student who is 'tapped' to become one of the elite of the elite, a problem crops up and there is a lot of running in fear for the life of our hero.

This installment offers up more sexual energy and more likable (and well played )dislikable characters, a few minor changes in casting could have been made. For instance the abundance of overly WASPish pretty boys. Without debating how ethnically diverse secret societies are, I'm sure all the younger members are not all pretty boys.

The story, what little of it was there, does turn the previous movie on it's ear, sort of. Which would have been more refreshing had it had the sence of suspense and wonder of the original and excluded the somewhat rushed-wanna-be-a-cool-plot-twist-but-wasn't ending. Make no mistake though, I am not saying that the first one had a lot of suspense, it just seemed to have more.Unfortunately the performances of the young actors could not bring this movie to life.

All in all, I would recommend it if you are not looking for much depth or story.If you're looking for a movie to satisfy look for something else. I would give it a 3 out of 10.

An improvement over the first one. This entry has almost the exact same plot as the first one. A student is killed and The Skulls set about covering up the death, but a student witnesses it and tries to bring The Skulls to justice.

Nothing really remarkable, but the film is decently paced, and has an appealing enough cast and some sexy moments. Plus it isn't nowhere near as cliched and over the top as the first one.

Rated R; For One Scene of Partial Nudity.

The first 'Skulls' had a tailor made premise ripe for cheesy over-the-top moments & was easy to drink down because it had a few well known faces in the cast. 'Skulls II' - the first of two dtv sequels - can't say the same thing. The movie is adequately made, but it's strictly by the numbers repeating much of the same ground on a cheaper scale with no splashy moments to make up for it.

University student Ryan Sommers (Robin Dunne) is about to join the Skulls but has mixed feelings about it. He doesn't take the ceremony seriously earning him some irk from the higher ups and is punished with some menial cleaning. Doing such, he witnesses another member of the Skulls with a girl who falls off a roof. Certain he saw her die and then convinced there's a coverup.

The sequel directly acknowledges the events of the first film and there's your standard twists, betrayals, budding romance and cars trying to run Ryan down. None of it terribly exciting if you've seen your share of movies. Dunne is sufficient as your vanilla lead and there's some very brief female nudity. Directed by Joe Chappelle who got his start doing fare such as 'Halloween 6' & 'Phantoms', I'm not sure this is a step up.