Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

GL84 Moving to a new house in the country, a teen finds that his classmates squeaky-clean image comes from their involvement in a mad doctor's series of mind-control experiments and when he learns his friends are next sets out to stop them before his family and others fall to the change.This here wasn't that bad but had some good parts to it. One of the best parts is that the film is quite creepy in places, mainly due to the fact that it keeps the mystery rightly unknown until the end. By keeping it that way, there's a good build as it throws the different actions which come about that works wonderfully in here, making the revelation feel special with all the attention towards it. That is a fantastic advantage, as the different methods used to show how the change has taken place from the stoic expressions and vicious gangland beatdowns on anyone to the outbursts of violence that on anyone that goes against their programmed guides to life as these little bits of evidence make it clear something has happened, and it gives a certain amount of atmosphere to the proceedings. The film is really good once it gets to the psychiatric hospital, which is creepy, unsettling and remains a highlight. The last plus here is the film's action-packed ending, using several big brawls and a great car chase that has the great resolution to the big mystery which here also allows for the great conclusion, the visual of the car going off the side of the cliff with the others all along the sides and back. Altogether, this here didn't have much wrong with it, but they are big flaws. The biggest one here is that the tactics used to indicate the behavioral change aren't that scary. The fact that it's just not in the least bit scary or creepy is a huge factor here since it's got a lot of these scenes in the beginning which is supposed to show something is wrong, but all it does is just showcase one lame tactic after another. Nothing that happens, from the bullying beat-downs to the association with different cliques and such isn't all that scary, yet that's all the attempts made to try to build up to something, which is deadly dull since nothing really works all that well. The worst factor of all this is that it goes on for so long, since it's pretty much all the first hour of the film that it does this, so there's a lot of time to show off some really nice ideas and scenes to really drive them home, but it's got nothing to showcase at all, and to do it for so much of the film is really bad. The other big flaw here is that there's not a whole lot of blood and gore in this since there are hardly any deaths at all in the film except for the ending. There really needed to be a few deaths scattered throughout to help the film along, and the ones we have are really uninspiring and bloodless anyway, making for another big disappointment. These here are the film's problems.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Brief Nudity.

SnoopyStyle In Cradle Bay on Crescent Island, football jock Andy is parked with a girl. His demeanor turns and kills her. Then he kills a cop and Officer Cox (Steve Railsback) lets him go. Gavin Strick (Nick Stahl) watches from afar. The Clarks from Chicago arrive in town after losing the oldest son. Gavin befriends Steve Clark (James Marsden) who explains the school is ruled by a clique called Blue Ribbon. Steve is taken with edgy girl Rachel Wagner (Katie Holmes). Dorian Newberry (William Sadler) is the school janitor and rat catcher. Steve and Gavin discovers the parents working with Dr. Edgar Caldicott (Bruce Greenwood). Gavin is picked to be the next candidate by his parents.I like the Bodysnatcher feel to the story setup. There are probably too many kills too early and it probably effected the ending. The actors are all good in their roles. However the movie ends badly. I think the writer couldn't figure out a clever way to end the movie. It's too bad because the movie seems to be set up for a tense thriller. Instead, it's done without any finesse and it's unsatisfying.

willhaskew A teenager named Steve Clark (Jamie Marsden of X-Men fame), moves with his family to a small town called Cradle Bay in Washington State after leaving Chicago due to his older brother committing suicide. He encounters outcast stoners named Gavin Strick (Nick Stahl) and U.V. (Chad Donella). They're at the bottom of the social ladder at Cradle Bay HS. Steve also meets the Blue Ribbons, a type of Phi Beta Kappa-esque group of seemingly civic-minded student athletes. They seem like typical high achievers at first, but they're violent elitists, given to random acts of bullying, intimidation, assault and seen in the opening scene, murder. Before participating in the mysterious Program run by the resident school psychologist, some of the Blue Ribbons' leaders were once good friends of Gavin and U.V. It seems that Gavin, Steve and Rachel Wagner (Katie Holmes), Gavin's only other friend and Steve's love interest, are the only ones that truly take notice of the Blue Ribbons destructive nature while parents and community leaders look the other way. On the plus side, they did have an interesting idea of an almost cult-like group of student high achievers along with some creepy scenes seen with the 'recruiting' they do. The negatives, they give in to stereotyping, with jocks, stoners and social outcasts. The most disturbing thing about this movie may be the idea of some misguided educator deciding that the 'bad students' need to be improved through aggressive Pavlovian conditioning.

gavin6942 The new kid in town (James Marsden) stumbles across something sinister about the town's method of transforming its unruly teens into upstanding citizens.This film has an impressive cast for a movie without a notable writer, producer or director (although David Nutter was a director and producer of The X-Files, which gave him some credibility at the time). Katharine Isabelle, William Sadler (as the deranged school janitor), Katie Holmes (in perhaps her best role) and Ethan Embry (to name a few).Although the movie apparently did very poorly, allegedly lasting only a week in some markets, the film launched the very brief music career of The Flys (who appeared on a few soundtracks and disappeared in 2002). This is clearly a soundtrack-centered film (as many were in the 1990s and before), with plenty of bands who were hoping to get noticed. One did.