Rites of Passage

Rites of Passage is a flawed piece of filmmaking about a college dweeb trying to prove his manhood to his peers by dragging two van loads of his peers plus a professor (played by Stephen Dorff in a nothing role) out on a field trip to his family home in order to observe ancient Indian land on his property and take ancient Indian hallucinogens.

In the meantime, his disturbed brother (Wes Bentley) is almost as obsessed with finding a woman as he is with Native American history. He, along with his deranged, grieving grounds keeper (Christian Slater), have been cooking, using, and selling the hallucinogenic flowers as well. Of course, it's bad news when these two unstable characters run up against a bunch of pretty young students, especially when a tragic coincidence turns out to link them in an unexpected way.

The short review of this movie is that it sucks. Essentially, it's just an overcomplicated dead teenager movie with an above average cast. In one of the few highlights of the movie, scream queen Brianna Evigan pops up in a smallish part and spends most of her screen time in her underwear. In fact, most of the actresses are either in their underwear or bikinis for most of the movie but there's no actual nudity. Not much gore, either. And the characters aren't remotely likable so this is the sort of movie where you're hoping for everyone to die but disappointed when the death scenes are generic, mostly bloodless and generally forgettable.

Rites of Passage is all over the place, silly, and kind of pointless. It's not really an anti drug movie, it's not hardly scary, and it's not often funny. The only entertainment value comes from Christian Slater's crazy, over-the-top acting as he scrambles around waving a shotgun, muttering to himself, and hallucinating. Basically, imagine Tucker and Dale vs. Evil made without any of the wit.

the notion that people would have issues "unrelated" to the themes portrayed in this movie is invalid. the very fact that this movie chose to capitalize and exploit native culture for a mere thrill factor is reason enough for some people to find it offensive and a poor representation of the native community. just because you got a couple of native people to get on board with the project in no means makes it OK nor does that small group represent first nations community of this country. and in this day and age when native Americans are being misrepresented and portrayed stereotypically left and right it's no surprise that this movie would once again portray native people in a stereotypical misrepresented manner. the problem is this American society that we live in doesn't find it necessary to really educate themselves about our culture or way of life unless it serves them in some way, i.e learning enough to make a believable thrasher film. because if this society did truly educate themselves they would acquire enough respect and dignity that they wouldn't exploit an already damaged culture that has been almost completely eradicated in the name of the American dream. but of course this film represents America, Hollywood, where nothing is sacred. everything is exploited for a buck and entertainment. so while you go ahead and exercise your rights at the expense of others, just remember why you chose to do it. not to educate people about a culture and a people, it was to entertain with blood murder, drugs and Indians.

Attempting to visit an authentic Indian burial ground for research, a group of students partying away at the site run afoul of a demented killer looking to punish them for a past indiscretion and forcing them to fight him off to get out alive.

This here turned out to be quite a misguided effort, mainly because so much of it really doesn't gel together the way it is. The premise of turning a haunted burial ground into a slasher is quite novel and generates much of the positives toward this, but the fact that the killer is absolutely pathetic, generates no fear or suspense from his physical appearance since he's essentially a homeless person for all intents and purposes and runs around with a shotgun, not a true slasher weapon which relegates all the kills to gunshot wounds or merciless pounding with a foreign object, greatly reducing the gore quotient here that could've saved this. The constant drug use allows for a few freaky hallucinations from time-to-time but the vast majority of the time nothing substantial happens during the trip, rendering it quite curious as to why it was featured as it was and why there was a huge furor from the characters to include it, so overall this has way too many problems. Even more ridiculous is the animated talking sock puppet giving the lead advice, a tactic that tries to make this a comedy but fails miserably as it comes off as incredibly lame more than anything, and it really only has a few isolated individual moments where it approaches watchability to make this enticing.

Rated R: Continuous pervasive drug use, Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and Brief Nudity.

"Grandmother Malloy I've come to beg for your roots. I promise to do you no harm. I need to borrow your magic for tonight." After an anthropology student decides to take a few of his classmates to a family ranch in order to do a mock ritual for extra credit they get more then they expect. His brother seeing this as a chance to get revenge for his family decides to make the ritual a real thing. So going in I was thinking this was going to be decent. While I was not totally wrong it could have been way better. The beginning was actually pretty entertaining and a little funny. The longer it went on though the more it started to drag and I was just interested enough to want to find out what happened. What started off as an interesting idea devolved into the kids in an abandoned area start getting killed off one by one type movie. While this is not a terrible movie this is still just OK. Overall, a fun and entertaining beginning gives way to a formulaic ending that isn't as fun. I give it a C+.

I am a returning student at Santa Barbara city college and I was given an extra credit assignment in my marketing 101 class to watch this film which was shot locally where I live. I thought that this movie was better then I expected it to be and it was interesting to see the the locations in which the movie was shot. I have been at many of these places. I think any time a movie is filmed in your home town, it gives you a sense of pride.

The target audience in which this film was intended for was very well chosen. If your going to market out to a specific audience in this town, one of the best one's to market out to is college students. I believe the producer had a very accurate depiction of the local college student life here in Santa Barbara/Goleta area. The movie touches on many areas of the crazy party life styles that is considered the norm around this area. It also touches on certain subjects like the Chumash Indians, and their past (very minimal info on them I agree), drug abuse, sex and the uncertain thoughts of college kids today and where they feel they belong.

Overall I choose to see this movie in a positive light. I have met both the Director and Writer,of the film (Peter Iliff) along with his life long friend Executive Producer and co-writer (Rick Halsey) who partnered up with him for the movie. Both of them are very different individuals and have different life goals, but it was good to see how they can come together with a common goal and make a movie.

To all the people who are angry about this movie, I sincerely believe you guys are misdirecting your anger these guys are in no way attempting to disrespect anyone in any way. Salud!

PS. If you want to reply to my post/review feel free to do so... ;) jcastenetto@gmail.com