On Teen Slasher Flicks
(Spoilers for 'The Faculty' and 'Disturbing Behavior')
By J. Dunbar

I'll admit it--I'm a geek. Of course I'm a geek. I'm a major contributor to this site, aren't I? And as a geek, I demand certain things from my movies. I want good characterization, a good plot, and a climax that doesn't disappoint. True, there are some movies that I enjoy that do NOT offer these qualities, and such movies often fall into my "guilty pleasures" list--under "mindless fun".

So, I went to see 'X-Men' with my parents the weekend it came out. I didn't want to at first. I have a severe allergy to most superhero movies, with only quirky films like 'Mystery Men' or the odd Tim Burton flick. (1989's Batman. Although, the casting for the Joker really blew.) Anyhow, I found this movie fantastic. Great characters, great message, and EYE CANDY. I'll have to review this movie later.

But this is about teen slasher flicks. So I'm coming to my point. Afterwards, my sister (HD) and I thought that we'd like to see the guy who played Cyclops in another movie. We couldn't see the color of the actor's eyes in X-Men, of course, since Scott Summers has that whole optic blast problem. We rented 'Disturbing Behavior'. To round our movie fun off, we also decided to rent 'The Faculty', since this movie not only featured Famke Janssen (Jean Grey), but also Jon Stewart (Daily Show Host) and Bebe Neuwirth (if you don't know who this is, you should be ashamed).

Out of these two movies, I would have to say that I was more amused by The Faculty. It was a stupid premise, but there was some talent in the movie that promised at least a fun romp. I was vaguely amused by the whole fake lesbian bit put on by the geek--and get this right, kiddos, she was a geek, not a goth--and the fact that the dope dealer turned out to have Dexter's Laboratory set up in his basement. I liked how the head jock decided suddenly to quit the team, and I loved the poor little abused snothead. Elijah Wood is made for being kicked around.

What really struck me about this movie, though, was that it was 'The Breakfast Club' on serious narcotics. All of the archetypes are here. We've got our princess (Delilah), our jock (Stan), our rebel (Zeke), our nerd (Casey), and one weird girl (Stokely). The weird girl even goes as far as to dare to look like her Breatfast Club counterpart. That's all we need for our Hughes-esque tagteam....so I'm wondering why everyone thought it was freaky when Marybeth turned out to be the Bugger Queen? (Okay, I'm lending too much talent to the story. Ender's alien queen was much more alien, and nowhere near as stereotypically nasty.) If this is indicative of the best of the new genre of teen slasher movies, I'm rather glad that I've stayed away.

Our second feature was 'Disturbing Behavior'...was that a movie? It was stupid. It's as if there were two different plots, and neither of them were any good whatsoever. I did discover the color of James Marsden's eyes. They're blue. A rather lovely blue. (What were you expecting? Red?) Other than that--well, there was a stoner who was cool, but then he wasn't, and what little plot there was fell apart, and I began to wish very much that I was being mind-controlled too..because I wanted to see the end of the movie to write this review, but I kept nodding off.

Unfortunately, the few minutes of sleep were more interesting than the end of the movie, which was setting up for some sort of sequel.

Heaven forbid. The last thing we need is more of this kind of schlock.