Who says giant, national video-rental chain stores are impersonal and uncaring? After I returned the craptacular Gossip a couple of weeks ago, my local store inexplicably instituted parental restrictions on my account, preventing me from renting any movies naughtier than PG-13. Given my rental record, they were probably just looking out for my best interests. I appreciate it, guys, but you can't save me. It's not worth the effort to even try. Disturbing Behavior opens with weird roving lights that highlight the opening credits as creepy-ass Mark Snow-composed music plays. It sounds kind of like Enigma having a bad drug trip while watching Halloween. Following the credits, we pan down from a view of the stars to a couple of teens making out in a car, parked on some lonely cliff overlooking a view of the Great Northwest. The kids smooch for awhile, the girl sitting in the boy's lap on the driver's side. Eventually the boy pulls away. The girl slides over to the passenger seat and wants to know what's wrong. He says he has a big game on Friday and "[he] needs [his] fluids." Eww. Which sport does he play? The boy (who looks like a younger Gil Bellows) notices a tattoo on the girl's ankle and asks her why she would mutilate herself like that. Calm down, Skippy. My mom has a tattoo. It's not like she had a third eye implanted. The girl ignores his question and slides back over to kiss some more. Then she slides down to the floor to adjust his fluid levels. Eww. Sorry. As she gets busy, a stoner boy and his dog wander out from some woods above the overlook and get a good view of what's going on. Then a police cruiser sneaks down towards the car, lights off. What, did the girl trigger some sort of blowjob signal recognizable within a five-mile radius? Does everybody want a turn? Inside the car, Blowjob Girl is learning the fundamental rule of teen thrillers -- sex equals death. The boy's eyes start to roll back in his head as he gets that goofy orgasm look. Oh, wait. I stand corrected. It's the "I'm Going to Kill You Now" look. You don't confuse those two things. Unless you're Justin from Big Brother. One of the boy's eyes glows red for a moment; then he reaches down, grabs the girl on both sides of her head, and snaps her neck. He pulls her up, calls her a slut, and pushes her back over to the passenger side. And thank heavens The Flys are singing "Got You (Where I Want You)" on the soundtrack right now, because God forbid anybody gets murdered on film these days without appropriately ironic music.
Outside, the two officers have left their cruiser and are approaching the car. One officer knocks on the window, recognizing the boy and asking him to step out of the car, pointing out that it's past curfew. The boy steps out of the car, and he and the officer chat about the game on Friday. It sounds like the boy is the quarterback of the football team and his name is Andy. That's still no explanation for why he needs his "fluids" for the football game -- although I have seen some videos that could answer that question in a manner not appropriate for children or delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention. Meanwhile, the other officer is scoping out the car. Hey, the other officer is Agent Jeffrey Spender from The X-Files. You know, the bastard child of Cigarette Smoking Man, who refused to believe his mother was abducted by aliens and then got killed off? Or was he? Wait, was he? It seems like it was so very long ago. And it's like none of that stuff even matters on the show anymore. In any event, Officer Spender shines a flashlight inside the car and sees Dead Blowjob Girl. Before he can really do anything about it, however, Andy grabs the gun from the other officer's holster and shoots Officer Spender in the chest. He goes down, dead. As the surviving officer calms Andy down and attempts to get the boy to give him his gun back, Andy repeats that he needs his fluids. What, did Spender make him horny, too? Andy gives the officer his gun back, but rather than arresting the murderer, the officer tells him to get out of there, pronto. Andy drags the body of Blowjob Girl out of the car and drives off. Stoner Boy and his dog, by the way, witness the whole thing and run off before the officer sees them. Here's where the opening credits would be if this were an episode of The X-Files or Buffy the Vampire Slayer or one of those shows. But instead, we cut to the Exposition Ferry (yes, that's ferry, not fairy), which is carting in our movie's hero, along with a big heap of background story. Our hero for this recap is Steve Clark, played by James Marsden. Steve's little sister, Lindsay, rushes over to him and gushes about how much better their new life is going to be and how much better everything's going to be blah blah blah moving to a new town. Lindsay runs off to make sure her 'N Sync posters haven't been crumpled during the move. The ferry passes an unmanned rowboat, which sets off Mark Snow and his dramatically intense compositions.
And so we are introduced to Cradle Bay, the Clark family's new hometown. As they're driving off, some ferryman tells them that they'll enjoy living in Cradle Bay and that they'll never want to leave. Well, that's a huge red flag right there. Normal people would be all, "The mayor's an idiot and gave the city garbage contract to his brother-in-law and now we have to pay twice as much for pick-up as we used to. And I don't know where the hell my property taxes are going but they sure aren't being used to pay for decent teachers around here. It rains all the time, the cold hurts my joints, and I'm thinking of moving to Palm Beach. And if those hippie whale-watchers throw their trash on my lawn one more time, I swear I'm going to open fire." Everybody bitches about his or her hometown. It's normal behavior. The Clarks move into their new home. Papa Clark finds Steve sitting in his room and asks him if he's nervous about the first day of school. Because somebody who looks like James Marsden would have so much trouble fitting in. Dad leaves, and Steve looks at a picture of himself and Ethan Embry, both of them smiling and covered with mud. I've seen videos with that theme, too. Don't judge me; love me. We cut to a freaky montage of images featuring Ethan acting like a lunatic. He's talking about snakes in the garden and spiders in the bed and sticking his face in the camera lens and looking about for some French dressing to give the scenery some flavor. It turns out to be a dream of Steve's. He wakes up gasping for air with tears in his eyes. It's time for Steve's first day of school. Boring stock establishment shots of kids and buses and cliques, oh my. Cut to an English class, where a scary, shiny, pointy boy named Trent is reading Dickens aloud to the other students. Seriously, Trent looks like somebody decided to make a ventriloquist's dummy that looked like Noah Wyle. The teacher is similarly creepy. I think they deliberately chose actors who look like they could be robots for this movie. The teacher takes the opportunity to introduce Steve, and condescendingly asks him if they read Dickens in Chicago. Because, you know, there's no culture in Chicago or anything. The lecture is interrupted by the late arrival of Dickie Atkinson, a scowling teen clad in denim and leather so you know he's a rebel. He and the teacher bicker; there's an exchange of automotive-part terminology to establish that Dickie is a gearhead, a grease monkey, or as the school's guidance department might describe him, "a student on the vocational arts track." Some of the students laugh at the bickering. Dickie asks Trent what's so funny. Trent says he was just thinking how ignorance kills. Dickie doesn't understand what Trent means, which causes Trent to riposte, "Exactly." Except that Trent's comment about ignorance killing makes no sense anyway, so his insult is idiotic. Perhaps it's foreshadowing, but there's not so much as a peep from Mark Snow and his collection of disturbing etudes, so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to think. Anyway, Dickie jumps up and attempts to physically assault Trent. Some students separate the boys, and the teacher sends Dickie to the principal's office. Steve, meanwhile, looks around the classroom and ends up drawing the eye of Stoner Boy from way back in the opening scene. Stoner Boy is wearing a hooded sweater and secretly listening to music rather than paying attention in class.
At lunch, Steve sits alone at the cafeteria, because looking like a male supermodel brands you a total outcast in the high-school social strata. Stoner Boy, accompanied by his friend, Albino Stoner Boy (no kidding), wanders up and asks if they can join him. Stoner Boy introduces himself as Gavin and Albino Stoner Boy as U.V. Obviously, that's somebody's idea of an ironic joke. Somebody with very little sense of humor or irony. Gavin tells Steve about how he and U.V. smoked a joint during gym; then he attempts to flirt outside his clique by talking up Lorna, a blonde Heathers type of girl. She tells him to drop dead and walks off. So, apparently, somebody decided that the target audience for this film would be the home-schooled, visiting space aliens, and people trapped in sensory deprivation chambers. In other words, people who have never been in a high school in their entire lives, because Gavin spends the fifteen minutes describing, in loving detail, all the various cliques. Yes, we know, people: you've got your jocks, your motorheads, your skaters, your popular kids, your nerds. Let's move it along. I'm not interested in watching High School Stereotype Theatre. Less chatting, more bleeding. This lengthy and remarkably unnecessary exposition serves only to get Gavin to talk about the "Blue Ribbons," a group of the popular kids who go out and hold bake sales and serve the community. They tend to wear blue clothing or letter jackets and look pretty much like any popular clique at any high school, anywhere. Trent, Lorna, and Andy are all Blue Ribbon members. Gavin and U.V. hate the Blue Ribbon kids, which again is pretty typical to any high school, anywhere. Lunch ends (their lunch period lasts five minutes?), and Gavin leaves, telling Steve, "Welcome to my nightmare." Awww, poor Gavin. Thank god he's there to help me understand what it's like to be in high school, because I wouldn't know, as I'm nothing more than a complicated computer program designed to write snarky recaps and have never had any dealings with the educational system. At the end of the day, Steve witnesses two Blue Ribbon guys harassing a student. The guys make some noise about helping the boy study math, but he's clearly intimidated. When they see Steve, they smile big, fake, bully smiles -- you know, the ones that have nothing to do with being happy and everything to do with showing somebody how sharp your teeth are, so to speak -- and give him a friendly greeting. Steve responds neutrally and leaves.
Back at home, Lindsay seems to have had no problems making friends; she's brought one home for dinner, and the two of them are studying spelling. As the family comes together for dinner, Lindsay mentions that Allen was a good speller. The friend is confused, as she thought Lindsay's brother's name was Steve. Lindsay, though, meant her other brother, who is dead. The family starts getting uncomfortable. Dad asks to change the subject. This sets Steve off, because he doesn't see why they can't talk about dead Allen around the dinner table with a complete stranger. He has a hissyfit at the table and stomps off. Elsewhere, Dickie drives up to some moonlit docks in his souped-up Mustang. Alone. He's so very, very doomed. He walks up a plank to board some boat, saying that he's there for some car parts. But there will be no fan belts or spark plugs for Dickie this evening. Instead, Trent, Andy, and a bunch of other Blue Ribbon jocks come out of the shadows holding hockey sticks. I was going to make a joke about having a video with this theme, too, but then the jocks attack Dickie with the sticks, so never mind. Although I'm sure somewhere out there, there's a video...no, I don't even want to know. I shouldn't have mentioned the spark plugs, either. Another day. Steve is sitting in some guidance office, talking with two counselors or something -- they don't bother with any real introductions. They're waiting for Dr. Caldicott, a counseling specialist, to begin some sort of preliminary guidance session. Caldicott arrives (played by Bruce Greenwood), and he has a creepy little mustache, so you know he's the evil mastermind. Plus, when they discuss extracurricular activities, Caldicott has nothing but wonderful things to say about the Blue Ribbon kids, so there you go. Another guidance counselor says he knows about Allen's death, causing Steve to have some more Ethan Embry blipvert flashbacks. Caldicott gives the typical "we're here for you" guidance counselor speech. Because in the movies, guidance counselors care. Even the evil ones. Whereas my high-school guidance counselor didn't even know who the hell I was until I started taking my college entrance exams as a junior. You know, I need to pick a more mature show to try to write extras for. These high-school flashbacks are just not good for me. Steve walks out of the office to the parking lot -- and into some horrid rock ballad on the soundtrack. It sucks. It creeps me out more than Mark Snow's music. Anyway, this music is playing in order to punctuate Steve's love-at-first-sight moment. He spies Katie Holmes, dressed in tight black-denim jeans, a black leather jacket, and a torso-revealing top. She's dancing in the back of a pick-up truck to music one would assume only she can hear. Because it doesn't match the horrid rock ballad at all. Oh, and Katie Holmes? Can't dance. Sorry. It's rather embarrassing. She just kind of sways back and forth with her hips and runs her hands through her hair. Then she suddenly realizes that she totally can't dance and stops and sits down. She looks around warily; I'm assuming that she's hoping nobody saw her wriggling around like a fish on a hook.
Gavin sidles up to Steve to give him the 411. Goth Joey is named Rachel Wagner, a friend of Gavin's, and she's -- wait for it -- from the wrong side of the tracks. Gavin walks up to her and calls her "dancing queen." She gives him a dirty look because somebody saw her slow-mo seizures and totally busted her. Gavin introduces Rachel to Steve. They give each other looks. Gavin notes the instant chemistry and suggests that somebody should "cue the power ballad." You wouldn't say that if you could hear the one in the background already, Stonehead. Rachel tells Gavin to "fail to be a tumor," an awkwardly worded catchphrase and insult that I hope never made it into popular use. Gavin suggests that they all hang out that night and get some beer. Steve's game. Cut to evening, in the parking lot of a grocery store. Gavin tries and fails to convince a man to buy a case of beer for them. He complains to the others that "the problem with America is mankind's abject unwillingness to contribute to the delinquency of minors." Yes, that is a problem. If Hollywood has taught me anything, it's that the misadventures of delinquent teens are one of the main avenues through which we uncover threats to our fine way of life, in addition to those of suspended police officers, precocious little girls, and visitors from the future. Buy your neighborhood kids booze and cigarettes! Our lives depend on it! While the three of them are hanging out in the parking lot, a creepy Blue Ribbon jock approaches Rachel and tries to strike up a conversation. He goes by the nickname of Chug, which is just so sad. It's a nickname that says little more than a headline like "Fraternity Member Dies In Spring Break Boating Accident," with a subhead indicating a suspected blood-alcohol level of thirty percent or something. Gavin makes some crack about steroids, and he and Chug snipe at each other. Chug invites Rachel to hang with him and the Blue Ribbon kids at the yogurt shop. The yogurt shop? Rachel is a better person than I. My response to an invitation to a yogurt shop would be to laugh, much in the manner that Haley Joel Osment does in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Not that I have anything against yogurt shops, but come on. It's like taking your date to Subway or something. It's sad, pathetic, and wrong. Anyway, Rachel doesn't give a yes or a no, and Chug wanders off into the grocery store. Gavin mocks Rachel for having an interest in Chug. Inside the grocery store, Chug stands in line while a couple of teens -- stoners having an attack of munchies -- goof around in front of a display of Cap'n Crunch. Chug stares at Rachel through the front windows of the store. Suddenly he starts having -- well, you would normally call them flashbacks or blipverts, but since he's having weird flashes about stuff that's going on right now, I guess I'll call them "flashpresents." He has flashpresent images of Rachel's face, Rachel's torso, and Rachel's ass, in red duotone shading, punctuated with various flashing kaleidoscope shapes and sound effects that sound like they came from a sword fight in an anime cartoon. Chug's eye glows red. Just then, the stoners run into him from behind. Chug goes psycho, crushing a milk carton in his hand, because he has absolutely no intention of doing a body good. He hurls one boy into the Cap'n Crunch, grabs the other one by his nose ring, and hurls him into some other displays. He continues to beat the crap out of the two guys until the surviving police officer from the opening scene, who just happens to be shopping as well, comes over and pulls Chug off of them. The stoner who used to have a nose ring gets up, all covered with blood and owning a newly deviated septum. Chug charges him and tosses him into the meat display. Then Chug collapses on the ground. Everybody in the entire town is in the grocery store right now, witnessing this, including our heroic trio of Steve, Gavin, and Rachel. Steve wonders what the hell just happened. Rachel calls it "Toxic Jock Syndrome," which would have been a cool teaser headline for this Extra and damn her for thinking of it first.
Later, the trio drives out to the waterfront in Rachel's car. Steve wants to know what could cause that behavior. Rachel thinks it's caused by 'roid rage, and claims somebody saw Andy bite off the head of a kitten in a fit of rage. So did the kitten sexually arouse Andy, too? Ew. Anyway, Gavin disagrees that the source of the violence is steroids. Rachel mocks him and tells Steve that Gavin has some wacky theory about sinister forces at work. Doesn't she watch movies? Always trust the delinquent teenager. They always figure it out first. Gavin tells Rachel to "fail to be a complete bitch." Rachel counters, "Fail to be a pucker-ass, Gavin." Both of you fail to use that "fail to" sentence construction ever again. Another day at school. As Gavin leads Steve into the boiler room, he tells him about witnessing Andy kill Blowjob Girl. Apparently, the official party line is that Blowjob Girl ran away. Steve asks why Gavin hasn't gone to the police; he explains that Officer Cox (at last, a name) saw it all and didn't do anything. There's no mention of Spender getting offed, too. Poor guy. Nobody cared. Just like on The X-Files. Gavin rummages around for a pack of cigs and explains that this is the only safe place at school to grab a smoke. Just then, the boys are startled by a manhole cover on the floor sliding open and a hand clutching a dead rat reaching out. Run, boys, run! You've wandered onto the production of It! Oh wait, it's not an evil clown -- it's Will "Porno" Sadler, who is just a little bit less scary. But just a little bit. Porno is covered with muck and dressed up like a maintenance man. He demands to know what the boys are doing there. Oh, and he's totally doing the voice of Dana Carvey's cranky old man from the Saturday Night Live news segments. Gavin calms him down and introduces Steve. Porno starts ranting about rats, and I can hardly understand a word he's saying. He pulls out what appears to be the kind of boombox that astronauts might have brought with them on the lunar lander. It's made of aluminum and has this whole fifties vibe to it. He complains that it's supposed frighten rats, but it doesn't. He turns it on, and it makes a sounds like the background noises on the bridge of the original Star Trek series. See, there's the problem. It's for aliens, not rats. Gavin explains to Steve that Ratcatcher Porno is essentially the "village idiot" and is waging a war against vermin. A rat turns on another boombox elsewhere in the boiler room with its nose, and Ratcatcher Porno gets angry and melodramatic and goes to chase it off. I think his problem with the rats is that he doesn't want anybody chewing the scenery except him.
Later, Steve and Gavin join Rachel and U.V. outside. A crowd has gathered and is watching the Blue Ribbon kids destroy Dickie the Motorhead's Mustang with sledgehammers. And look, there's Dickie. And he's all cleaned up and wearing a blue sweater-vest and khakis -- a motorhead no more. Dickie jumps up on the hood of his car and knocks off some thing that he had installed on it that no doubt made the car faster or louder or both. I don't know -- I was in the nerd clique. U.V. asks Gavin if he told Steve about the murders. Steve knows, but is skeptical at the idea of some big conspiracy. He leaves and tells the guys he'll see them later. Night falls, and we cut to "Roscoe's Yogurt Shoppe." This just looks silly. It looks like one of those attempts at modern-retro-nouveau-deco diners, designed to somewhat look like those from the fifties, but cleaner and with much higher prices and fancier food. Steve heads towards the shop. The inside looks like a cleaned-up bar, though, rather than a diner. Consistency of vision, guys? Would some black and white tiles have killed you? Before Steve can so much as look at a menu, Trent comes up behind him and clasps him on the shoulder to say hello and invite him to hang out with the Blue Ribbon folks. He escorts Steve back to their table and introduces him to the perky, blue-clad boys and girls, each wearing a fake smile to call his or her own. They all make creepy small talk for a bit. Steve points out that Trent and Dickie are sitting together, though they had just gotten into a fight in English class not long ago. Trent explains that they made up, a process that separates man from the animals. Well, I don't know of any animals that bear grudges other than man, so what would they need to make up for? Well, except for cats. But they never apologize. As Steve is acclimatizing himself to the Blue Ribbon kids' unusual behavior, Lorna gives a "dirtbag alert." It's Gavin, who has just come in and looks disturbed to find Steve hanging with Cradle Bay's equivalent of "Chill Town." He wants to talk to Steve. How did he know he'd be at the yogurt shop, anyway? Trent answers on Steve's behalf that he's busy relaxing. Well, that's presumptuous. Don't be friends with people who don't let you answer inquiries yourself. Gavin gets snippy about the yogurt shop being the Blue Ribbons' turf, and some of the jocks stand up and look threatening. Steve's had enough of the creepy clique to last him the night, and he decides to leave with Gavin.
Outside, Gavin tries to explain to Steve that the Blue Ribbon kids are all either hypnotized or brainwashed. He pulls out a picture of a couple of Blue Ribbon members from days past, including Trent, when they were stoners just like him. Steve suggests that perhaps they just got tired of living the high life, but Gavin insists that there’s more to it than that and claims to have something to show him. So they sneak back into the school, where a parents’ meeting is taking place in the auditorium. They eavesdrop from some vent as Dr. Caldicott oversees a Blue Ribbon Advisory Board meeting. Somebody blathers on about bake sales and pep rallies and school spirit for the sole purpose of torturing me. Finally, Andy’s mother stands up with a question for the doctor. She’s worried because although Andy's grades have improved, he "has become somewhat...different" since attending some weekend seminar Dr. Caldicott has arranged. She explains that Andy seems "unkind to almost everyone outside the club." Unkind? Poor, sweet, deluded Mom. Caldicott brushes off her concern by explaining that yes, these kids do tend to come back from the seminars a little snobby at first. But what's actually happening is that these kids are feeling pride for the first time in their lives: "When you soar with the eagles, sometimes the pigeons below tend to look a little pedestrian." Is it est? Is that what's going on? That snobby attitude certainly sounds like something you'd get from people who believe in that est shit. Anyways, Caldicott says they have a new "candidate"; the parents have been counseled and have consented. And those parents would be Gavin's. Mommy and Daddy want Gavin off the weed and on the offensive line. Gavin freaks out. We cut to the waterfront, where Steve still doesn't think it's that big a deal to join the Blue Ribbons. Gavin continues to freak out while lighting a joint and bitching at Steve because he doesn't understand how "fucking huge" this is. Steve realizes that Gavin is genuinely scared, and invites him to spend the night at his place. Instead, Gavin pulls out a gun and says he's going to go back home and kill any Blue Ribbon kids he encounters there. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. A stoner kid going berserk and killing a bunch of the "good" teens will convince parents that trying to change their troubled children is a bad idea. When every teen in the town is forced into Caldicott's little program, they'll have Gavin to thank. Actually, Steve won't let it come to that. He wrestles the gun out of Gavin's hands and tells him to go home. Gavin begs Steve to give the gun back, but Steve refuses and walks away. Gavin walks off alone.
Mark Snow ratchets up the "Psychotic and Fugue in D Minor" as we cut to another school day. We're given a first-person view of somebody walking down the hall, with everybody looking at him in shock. Gee, wonder who that could be? Rachel, Steve, and U.V. are sitting together in the cafeteria. Rachel looks up, drops her jaw, and asks, "Who put the acid in my Spam?" The other guys look up and see that it's Gavin. Surprise! Not. Anyway, Gavin is different now. He's had a haircut, and he's wearing a sweater-vest and a button-up shirt, and we all know what that means. Nothing says "brainwashed initiate" to the popular clique like a sweater-vest. Rachel runs over to talk to Gavin and ask him what happened. Gavin says he's decided to apply himself, and he thinks he'll get better results hanging out with the Blue Ribbons. Rachel chases after him, but a Blue Ribbon jock tries to push her away, telling her, "This is rarefied turf; sluts need not apply." Dude, you're lucky she doesn't have a lunch tray right now. And -- "rarefied"? Shut up, moron. Rachel ignores him and follows Gavin, who's buying something from the Blue Ribbon bake sale table. Gavin blows her off again, and she sulks her way back to the table with the others. Steve decides to take matters into his own hands and attempts to chase after Gavin, but he's jock-blocked by Andy and another Blue Ribbon guy. They won't let Steve talk to Gavin. Steve tries to push past him, but one of the jocks pushes him to the floor. U.V. walks up to them to try to calm them down, but Andy grabs him and throws him down on a cafeteria table. Rachel runs up, pushes on Andy's chest, and asks him what his "maladjustment" is. In the meantime, all the other teens are fleeing the cafeteria like music critics from an O-Town performance. So everybody knows the Blue Ribbon kids are psychotic and dangerous. I would question the idea that people would prefer to have teens turned from slacker potheads to violent, bullying, judgmental loonies simply because they dress better, play sports, and get better grades. But, you know, it's probably the most realistic part of this movie. Anyway, Rachel goes over to check that U.V. is okay. Steve, though, has hit a rage of his own and takes down a jock with a cafeteria chair. But the other jocks are all over him, and they beat him down to the floor and kick him a bit for good measure. On the other side of the cafeteria, Ratcatcher Porno, busy mopping the floor, witnesses the whole thing.
A voice tells the jocks that Steve has had enough and offers a hand to help him up. It's Gavin. Steve gets up with his help and asks Gavin if he's okay. Gavin tells him he feels fantastic. Then he knees Steve in the stomach, and he goes down again. Rachel, U.V., and Ratcatcher Porno are all helpless witnesses. The jocks give Gavin his own blue jacket and leave. Chug kicks over Porno's mop bucket as he leaves and calls him a "retard." It occurs to me that if all the jocks have been brainwashed, then what was the school like before this all started happening? Was it really a school with no obnoxious popular clique? Did it even have a football team? Man, that sounds like utopia. And somebody had to come in and screw it all up. Later, Steve walks through town while "Danke Schoen" inexplicably plays on the soundtrack. He passes by the yogurt shop and sees Gavin hanging out with the Blue Ribbons, in case any of the slower members of the audience hadn't yet understood the fact that Gavin had been converted. Because that knee to the stomach was so ambiguous. Steve seeks refuge in the boiler room with Ratcatcher Porno. Ratcatcher babbles some nonsense. Really, I can't even transcribe it. He's added a New England accent to his cranky-old-man shtick. I managed to make out a reference to ketchup, but that's about it. Steve notices a paperback book in Ratcatcher's back pocket. He walks over and pulls it out. Now, see, Porno can claim Steve made the first move and he just thought the boy wanted some sugar. Anyway, the book is Slaughterhouse Five. Steve makes a big deal of the book being evidence that Ratcatcher Porno's behavior is just a big act. Yes, I think it's in Chapter Seven of the DSM-IV where possession of a Kurt Vonnegut book is considered evidence of good mental health and intellect. Anyway, Ratcatcher Porno makes a big deal of shrieking about rats being everywhere and leering around at nothing in particular and chewing scenery in an attempt to disabuse Steve of the idea that he's at all normal. Steve goes to leave, but Ratcatcher stops him. He lets the façade fall a little and asks Steve if he's ever wanted to just disappear, and explains that people get more "interesting" around you when they think you're stupid. But of course we're not going to hear what Porno tells Steve, because that would ruin the surprise. Or it would, if there were anything surprising in this movie, which there isn't. Instead, time passes, and we see Steve walking through the woods at night. Suddenly, voices in the darkness start calling Steve's name. The Blue Ribbon kids are stalking him. He freaks out and runs away. He makes it home safely, or so he thinks. Inside, Lorna is sitting on his couch. She claims she's there to tutor Lindsay in algebra. But Lindsay's gone to bed, and Steve's parents have gone to a meeting, leaving the two of them alone. Steve orders Lorna to leave, but she asks to use the restroom first. She washes her hands as she watches Steve drink a can of product-placed Coca-Cola. Lorna suddenly starts having "flashpresents" of Steve, much like the ones Chug had of Rachel. She unbuttons her shirt as she comes out of the bathroom and flashes a nipple at him. Steve tells her to leave, but she asks him if he thinks she's unattractive. He tries to explain that he's not a Blue Ribbon, but before he can get very far, she starts kissing him. Then her eye glows red, of course. And I suppose it says something about how we socialize boys and girls differently that, unlike Andy, Lorna starts her freak-out by blaming herself. She backs away from Steve, saying that what they're doing is wrong and repeating how bad and wrong she is. Steve tries to calm her down, but she stares at herself in a mirror, then suddenly rams her face into it. That moment might have been genuinely scary if it hadn't been given away in the trailers and commercials. Or if it hadn't been outdone by the seminal girl's-face-smashed-into-glass moment on Twin Peaks. Scariest thing I've ever seen on television, that scene.
Lorna continues to repeat "bad" and "wrong" as she turns to look at Steve. Blood is running down her face. She picks up a shard of the mirror and tries to attack Steve with it. He fights her off, and she has a brief seizure on the floor. Then she stops for a moment and just looks at Steve. Then she gets up, explains she has to go study for a test tomorrow, and simply leaves. Instead of heading home, however, she ends up strapped down to an examining table. Some chip has been removed from Lorna's eye. One of the doctors explains that the chip appears to be working fine, but "excessive stimulation of the pineal gland caused her dopamine levels to go through the roof." Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word "explains." We pan over to Dr. Caldicott, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, who puts his medical degree from the Doctor's University of Hooterville, also known as DUH, to good use and explains that sexual arousal makes them violent. The two of them toss a lot of fake medical-speak back and forth about what to do . Dr. Caldicott decides to experiment on Lorna a bit and see if they can't fix the problem. Cut to another school day. Rachel walks over to her locker and watches Dr. Caldicott escort a new student into his office. They give each other the stink-eye. After a brief discussion with U.V. about the demand for his killer bud, Rachel heads to the boiler room for a cigarette. But when she grabs the pack from the hidey-hole she used to share with Gavin, she finds a CD case with an image of a skull and crossbones on the cover. Is it a home recording of Gavin's garage band, The Swollen Polyps? As she's staring at the disc, Chug slides into the boiler room, looking for Rachel and doing the creepy "come out, come out, wherever you are" shtick. Nobody who uses that chant has good intentions, ever. Rachel seems to know this. She sets the CD aside in the shadows and walks over to warily ask Chug what he wants. Chug wants to know if she'd go out on a date with him. Rachel giggles for a bit, thinking that Chug's kidding, but he's not. Rachel tells him that she won't, causing Chug to shriek, "WHY NOT?!" Again, that might have been a genuinely scary moment if it hadn't been given away in the commercials and trailers for the movie. Rachel is taken aback for a moment, but rallies wonderfully: "How about this? You couldn't repulse me more if you were made out of equal parts of shit and maggots!" Why can't Dawson's Creek be on HBO, so Joey can give Dawson a similar verbal beat-down?
But sadly, that's not enough to get Chug to leave her alone. He pushes her back against some boiler and gets handsy and threatening, grabbing Rachel's boobs and telling her he could get away with anything because he's in the Blue Ribbons. Ratcatcher Porno is doing what he does best -- skulking helplessly in the shadows, watching things unfold. But suddenly, the boiler room is filled with the sounds of Uhura scanning an abandoned space capsule for life forms. One of the rats has turned on a Boombox Ex Machina that's sitting in the room somewhere. It has an immediate negative impact on Chug. He starts screaming and clutching his head as if the sounds hurt him. See -- jocks just don't like Star Trek. Rachel breaks free of Chug, grabs the CD, and makes her escape. Chug tracks down the Boombox Ex Machina and destroys it with his bare hands, shrieking and slamming it on the floor and punching it until it stops functioning. He calms down after the sounds stop; his hands are bleeding. He sees Ratcatcher Porno, but just calls him a retard before leaving. Humbled by Chug's scenery-chewing prowess, Ratcatcher simply responds, "Wow." Elsewhere, Steve and Lindsay are walking down a country road back to their home. Lindsay is encouraging Steve to try to fit in. It's not like he's even done anything approaching odd here. Maybe that's the problem. He needs to choose between violence and drugs, and so far he's refused. Steve notices that Lindsay is wearing a blue friendship bracelet and freaks out about it, demanding to know where she got it. She says they were handing them out at school and it's no big deal. So the Blue Ribbons are a street gang, then? All blue articles of clothing lead back to them? I guess they are a street gang, because here they come with some Boys in the 'Burbs drive-by menacing. A car full of jocks drives by slowly. They sneer at Steve, but greet Lindsay politely. Steve orders Lindsay to go inside. Steve walks over to Rachel's "manufactured home" -- in case you had forgotten that she was from the wrong side of the tracks. He wants to talk to her. She wants to show him the CD Gavin left for her. Apparently, living in abject poverty has not prevented Rachel from getting a fancy computer to play back the video Gavin burned. Gavin recorded himself on the CD, and he tells them that after he and Steve had their fight on his last night of stonerhood, he snuck back into the school and overheard Caldicott talking to some "wonk" and referring to the Blue Ribbons as "his children." Then he got upset and kicked the guy out of his office. I don't know how this information represents some pivotal discovery for these guys. They both knew that Dr. Caldicott was responsible for the Blue Ribbons and that whatever is wrong with them, he's involved. Gavin asks them to keep an eye on U.V., then cuts off the recording.
Rachel pulls out some folder full of documentation about Dr. Caldicott's job history that she downloaded off some database. He used to work at psychiatric institution on the other side of the bay, researching "neuropharmacology." Steve immediately takes this to mean that he was involved with mind control. A quick online search tells me that neuropharmacology refers to any part of medicine that involves the interaction between drugs and the nervous system, so Steve just set a new local record for conclusion-jumping. Still, I suppose it's better than the incredibly glacial pace with which movie characters figure out what exactly is going on. Steve wants to go check out the institution, and asks Rachel to come along. So Rachel and Steve hop aboard the Exposition Ferry, whose mystical powers encourage Steve to tell Rachel all about his brother's death. Steve's brother was depressed and shot himself to death eight months ago. That's it. It's sad and all, but it doesn't really serve the plot much, other than to make everybody extra-concerned about Steve's mental well-being. They arrive at the mental institution, recognizable because it looks like Arkham Asylum, as do all respectable Hollywood loony bins. They sneak in somehow, because it's so easy to bypass security at a mental institution. They probably just jimmied open an emergency exit with Steve's driver's license. The inside of the institution looks like one of those haunted houses that fourth-tier, currently-unemployed Hollywood make-up and special-effects artists slap together in cities across the country every October, then charge fifteen dollars for the singular honor of having biker guys and Goth teens who think they really are Malkavians pop out and shriek at you. Like I need to be in a strobe-lit hallway full of dry-ice mist for those people to frighten me. The two of them wander down the halls. Rachel looks through a window into a room and, of course, a freak with a disfigured face pops up and frightens her. Wait until she gets to the room with the zombie nurses stuffing the human arm into the meat grinder to make food for the patients. They continue walking down the hallway. Rachel looks to the left, then looks forward and is surprised by a mental patient standing directly in front of her. They both scream, and he goes running down the hallway. The two teens go running back the other way. This hallway doesn't have any corners that are visible. How could they have not seen him before now?
There's a brief cut to a security office, where a beeping wall panel informs some guard that there's something out of order. What, no video cameras? Did the Exposition Ferry not only take them not only across the bay but also back in time to the forties? Back in the halls, Steve and Rachel hear a sound and hide in a nearby bathroom. You know how haunted houses have two different kinds of freaks in them -- ones who pop out and surprise you, and ones who are in plain sight but scare you with their creepy behavior? They encounter one of the second type in the bathroom. Some boy is standing there, making a guttural whining sound. His mouth and hands are all covered with blood. Steve and Rachel back out of another exit as the boy says something indecipherable. The credits refer to him as "Flossing Man," so I suspect he took things a little too far. Or maybe he just made the mistake of using that unwaxed stuff. Steve and Rachel wander out into some community room (where Barry Manilow is being piped in). There, they see a teenage girl obsessively putting on make-up, and a boy obsessively brushing his teeth. I'm sure these are supposed to be "hints," but since we all have already been told exactly what's been going on, this is just pointless filler to allow them to toss some cheap scares our way. A nurse arrives, and the patients all rush over for their meds as Steve and Rachel hide in another room to keep from being seen. In this room is a teenage girl who is sitting in a chair, repeating, "Meet the musical little creatures that hide among the flowers" over and over and over again. Another innocent youth driven mad by The Smurfs. When will the suffering end? She starts getting louder as Mark Snow busts out with the "Tinkly Children's Music Box...Of Evil!" on the soundtrack. The girl's cries bring the other patients over to the windows of the room, and suddenly it's Night of the Living Dead as they moan and paw and try to get into the room. Steve tries to get the girl to shut up, but she won't, so Rachel punches her in the face and knocks her out. Inexplicably, this calms down the other patients, and they wander off. Maybe The Smurfs drove them all crazy and they wanted her to shut the hell up about them. Steve checks out the girl's wristband and sees that it's Betty Caldicott, the good (not!) doctor's daughter. And now it's time for the sing-along! We crank up the punk jams on the soundtrack: "I'm paranoid, I'm paranoid/Everybody's coming to get me!/Just say you never met me" -- yadda yadda yadda -- "I'm in Hell." Steve and Rachel flee the institution and drive off in her pick-up truck. They stop to get some gas. Rachel tells Steve that the last ferry leaves at 11:30, and she hopes he has some sort of plan. He says he's just making this all up as he goes along. Much like the screenwriters. As Steve fills the tank, a police cruiser zooms into the gas station and blocks the truck in. It's Officer Cox, just stopping by to evil things up a bit. He tells the kids that it's past curfew and wants to know what they're up to. They attempt a lie about studying, but Cox points out that they have no books.
Meanwhile, a beat-up old car -- one of those cars with the fake pick-up bed in the back -- pulls into the lot. It's Ratcatcher Porno. Officer Cox wants to know what Porno's doing there, and he blithers and babbles about rats and I. Just. Don't. Know. What. He's. Saying. He waves a dead rat around for emphasis. This whole movie is like somebody took a Tales Of The Crypt script and sucked out all the bad jokes and puns (and deaths), but didn't replace it with a better story. While Ratcatcher babbles on (something about Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous), Rachel surreptitiously starts her engine in the hopes of making an escape. Officer Cox isn't having any of that, though. He orders Rachel out of the car, then grabs her and tosses her into the back of his police car. Steve gets out to try to stop him. Cox punches him in the gut, then tosses him in the car as well. But then Porno sneaks up behind Cox and bashes him on the head with the Boombox Ex Machina. He goes down. Porno lets the kids out and hurries them on their way. It's a good thing he happened to come by and knew the kids were in trouble. And he knew that because…? Uhura must have warned him through the Boombox. They drive back to Steve's place. Rachel waits in the truck while Steve runs in to fetch Lindsay. I guess he thinks his parents won't believe him. Though I don't know why he thinks Lindsay will. But she does. Unfortunately, they get busted by the parents as they try to make their escape. Steve explains to Ma and Pa Clark that he's taking Lindsay and going back to Chicago. He tries to get the parents to be supportive and come with them back "home." But that's not going to happen. From behind Steve, Dr. Caldicott, who has been standing in the doorway, tells him that the family is home, and that they'll be happier here in Cradle Bay. Steve accuses his parents of selling him out. Mom claims that she just wants him "back." I guess they decided not to make Steve appear all that troubled in order to make the parents' decision to brainwash him seem even more extreme, but it probably would have been even more effective if Steve had ever shown some sort of typical teen maladjustment signs. I mean, it's not like the viewers are going to see Steve being sullen or depressed or experiment with drugs, and then conclude that they're okay with the idea of shoving a chip in his eye. Steve grabs Lindsay and makes to leave, but Dr. Caldicott tries to block the exit. Steve punches him in the gut and walks out.
Unfortunately for Steve, though, all the Blue Ribbons are waiting outside for him. Gavin asks him if "[he] can have this dance." Ugh -- save crappy lines like that for Die Hard VII: Make With The Dying Already, thank you very much. They've already grabbed Rachel and carted her off for her initiation. Chug charges Steve and knocks him down. He holds him down with his foot as the other Blue Ribbon kids surround him. U.V. watches all this from behind a tree. He knew this was going to happen, because albinos have psychic powers. That's the only thing that makes sense anymore. Cut to some dank corridor, where the Blue Ribbon jocks are carting a strapped-down Steve to his eye-piercing fate while telling him how much he's going to love it. They pass by another room, where he sees Rachel being strapped into a chair. He's wheeled into a separate room. Two men in lab coats drag Steve over to a chair. He manages to break free for a moment and leans onto a nearby utensil table. The men grab him again, failing to realize that he's grabbed a scalpel. He palms it as they strap him into the chair. Dr. Caldicott strides in and shines a flashlight in Steve's eyes, prepping him for the implant. Steve tells him everybody's going to notice how he's different when they release him. Caldicott is all, "Duh! You'll be better." Steve points out that this new version of him is going to get good grades and play sports, but will also occasionally rape and murder people. Caldicott: "To cure cancer, you gotta kill a few white mice." Fail to roll my eyes. Oops. Couldn't not do it. Steve repeats Betty Caldicott's line about Smurfs in order to get a reaction from the doctor. He looks surprised, but simply responds that she was a battle he lost, but things will be different now. He finishes prepping Steve and leaves. So we get this "A Clockwork Bore-ange" crap of Steve's eye being forced open while he's flooded with images of happy, achieving kids and words that exhort him to excel and be a good person. Some of the images are of female cheerleaders and figure skaters with pretty, pretty tutus. Is he supposed to use them as models of behavior as well? No wonder these jocks end up confused. They're not sure if they want to screw the girls or be the girls. Anyway, as these images are flooding his brain, a drill is approaching with the chip in it to shove into his eyeball. Steve uses the scalpel to cut through the straps of one arm. He manages to push the drill away. A doctor comes to try to stop him. He slashes at the guy with the scalpel and pulls his way out of the machine.
He lurches down the corridor, knocks out another doctor, and finds Rachel's room. He frees her as well, but she's all groggy. She leans on him as he wanders down the hallways. He makes a wrong turn and encounters Chug at a vending machine. Chug asks Steve where he thinks he's going with "his girl." Icky. Steve challenges him, and they fight it out in the hallway. Chug beats the crap out of him. Rachel, though, is waking up. She grabs a metal bar and whacks Chug over the head with it. This gets him to drop Steve and head for Rachel. She whacks him on the head again, and he goes down. A pool of blood collects around his head. I imagine that I'm watching Joey and Dawson right there. Rachel and Steve flee the hospital. And lucky for them, U.V.'s psychic powers told him exactly when to drive up to the hospital to help them escape. He pulls up in the pick-up with Lindsay on the passenger side. Steve and Rachel want to jump in, but U.V. won't let them until he's certain they aren't brainwashed. He asks them what the capital of North Dakota is. When they don't know the answer, he takes that to mean that they haven't been brainwashed. Hee. That was a little bit funny. But just a little. He lets them in so they can get to the ferry, which leaves in forty-five minutes. But there's yet another problem. Apparently, good boys and girls are expected to know how to put up a successful roadblock. Blue Ribbon kids and their cars are blocking the road to the ferry. The heroes stop the truck and climb out. Dr. Caldicott wanders up through the crowd of kids and tells Steve, "It's time to leave mediocrity behind. Step up on the bus." First of all, you're creating mediocrity, dipshit. Second of all, "Step up on the bus"? Take your est crap and cram it. But before the Blue Ribbons or Caldicott can take any action, another car starts driving towards the roadblock. It's Ratcatcher Porno! Uhura must have told him exactly what was going down. She's the best. Caldicott pulls a gun and shoots through the windshield. It's unclear whether or not he hits Porno. The car sideswipes Caldicott, sending him flying off the road. Porno rams through part of the roadblock that is covering some small side road that leads off into the woods. For some reason, every single one of the Blue Ribbon kids chases after Porno, leaving the others completely unattended. Yeah, Caldicott is manufacturing genius, all right. Porno stops the car a ways down the road, then pulls off the tarp over the pseudo-bed to reveal about a dozen Boomboxes Ex Machina (Boombox Ex Machinae?). He cranks them all up, and the U.S.S. Enterprise encounters the most unusual space anomaly ever. These readings are off the scale, Captain! All the kids start freaking out and covering their ears in pain. ["Probably because they saw the same trick in Mars Attacks." -- Sars] Porno starts driving away slowly, and all the kids start chasing the car again. Back up on the road, Steve orders everybody in the truck to drive off to the ferry. Then he gives Rachel a great big kiss. He says he'll meet them there as he grabs some motorcycle from the roadblock -- now, would "good" kids ride motorcycles? -- and chases after Porno.
He catches up with Porno's car, still being chased by the kids (and executes a perfect motorcycle jump over a small hill). They're on the same overlook where the movie started. Porno stops the car to talk to Steve. Porno tells him that the kids have to be stopped, because they can't let them go out into the real world with their mental problems. Steve thinks they can be helped, but Porno says they can't, because he would know something like that. Remove the chips, maybe? Well, that doesn't make for a dramatic conclusion. Also, Porno's been shot in the torso. So he figures the best way to end all this is to have all the Blue Ribbon kids clamber on to the top of the car to trash the boomboxes; then he'll drive over the cliff and kill everyone. Before he goes over, he shouts out, "Hey! Teachers! Leave those kids alone!" That's just wrong on so many levels. But hey, those are his last words, so it's not my problem. Steve, left alone on the cliff, turns around to see that Dr. Caldicott isn't dead after all and has managed to limp all the way out here to the cliff, even though everybody else either drove a vehicle or ran. Steve tells Caldicott that he's through. Caldicott gives some ludicrously bad speech about there being other towns and other troubled children and worried parents for him to play with. Really, they should have played up the camp value in this movie if they were going to write a villain like this who's so silly. Steve attacks him, and the two of them fight and roll around on the ground. The doctor nearly tosses Steve off the cliff, but Steve breaks free. They end up rolling around some more. Steve punches Caldicott, and he rolls off the cliff, but manages to grab Steve's leg. Steve kicks him and knocks him off the cliff to his death. Steve also says another one of those typically stupid goodbye lines, because if you're not going to have ironic music when you die, somebody has to say something "clever." Steve zooms back to the ferry on the motorcycle, reaching it just as it's leaving and performing another motorcycle jump off the loading ramp to land on the other side. At least he crashes the motorcycle this time, so there's a bit more realism. He finds Rachel and they hug. Rachel asks what happened. Steve says they're the only ones left. Umm...what about all the kids who weren't brainwashed at the school? There were, like, hundreds of them? And your parents? Now that Caldicott is gone, what are you running away from? Rachel wants to know where they're going. Steve says they're going "home," which is wherever they end up. Four runaway teenagers? I'd say Social Services. This is pretty stupid. They beat the bad guys. Why are they running? Rachel and Steve kiss, and U.V. repeats Gavin's line about them having sparks and firing up the power ballad. Please don't, thanks.
We get a cut to some inner-city school, and we know it's an inner-city school because there's hard-core rap music in the background and minorities everywhere. In a classroom, a bunch of kinds are acting rowdy. An administrator comes in and makes them all calm down. He tells them they have a new student teacher and he wants the kids to treat him with respect. The guy walks in, and as "Got You (Where I Want You)" starts blaring on the soundtrack again, we see that it's Gavin. The end. You know what, guys? Fail to make a sequel. Thanks.