Disturbing Behavior

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Under the Radar

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Yet another title from '98 (this is three in a row, now), 'Disturbing Behavior rode largely on the success of 'Dawson's Creek' star, Katie Holmes, who was a real up-and-comer at the time, pre-Cruise. At the time, she was pretty much a sex symbol for the average teenager, and it's probably safe to say, a lot of the reason anyone went to see this movie.

The Clark family decides to move to Cradle Bay Island, Washington, after the death of their son, Allen (Ethan Embry). The parents, Nathan and Cynthia (Terry David Mulligan and Susan Hogan, respectively) and daughter, Lindsay (Katherine Isabelle) are adapting to new life in their own way. Meanwhile, the son, Steve (James Marsden), runs into a particularly interesting group of new friends at school.

Enter Gavin (Nick Stahl), his right hand man, UV (Chad Donella), and the one we all came to see, Rachel (Katie Holmes). The group is all different levels of strange, and often times, even a bit irritating as they try so hard to be cool (except Holmes, she's kinda just a Goth kid). Gavin holds an absurd theory that there's some kind of sinister force that has transformed a group of seemingly perfect students named the "Blue Ribbons" into supreme goody-goodies. He also claims to have proof of it, and we clearly see him witness a crazy event in the opening scene, so the audience is well-aware that he's right, right from the get-go.

As one might guess, the rest of the world doesn't exactly believe in Gavin, passing him off as some kind of spaz. But when something extra disturbing happens, the group decides that it's finally time to investigate things, and get down to the route of what's making people act so strangely perfect.

At the end of the day, this is really just a kind of 'Body Snatchers' idea, re-imagined, and it could be said that this was 'The Faculty's "parallel" movie. You see, "parallel movies" were all the rage in the late 90s, usually having to do with some sort of disaster. 'Armageddon' parallelled 'Deep Impact', 'Volcano' parallelled 'Dante's Peak', the list goes on. This one also took place largely at a high school, and took some 'Body Snatchers' concepts, blending them with bits of 'Scream' (just about any horror at the time drew from 'Scream', really).

I kinda just took this one for what it was. It was interesting enough, but not exactly good, and not exactly original. Although they tried coining a phrase or two that just didn't stick ("sounds razor" - never heard anyone say that). However, somehow I got more from this than 'Urban Legend'. That may be because I prefer the idea of not knowing who to trust rather than just some random slasher character.

I didn't hate this movie, but it's still recognizably pretty bad, and as I said, it's mostly Katie Holmes at the time who managed to put butts in seats. Marsden wasn't known yet as Cyclops, and Stahl wasn't... almost known as John Connor (once) yet. I mean, let's face it, the only real John Connor was Edward Furlong. But I digress. This film boils down to a low rating. It's one that I didn't terribly mind sitting through, but one that I don't feel I need to check out again to try to get more out of it. The director moved on to bigger and better, including nine episode of 'Game of Thrones' among other things, so by now, this is just about a throw-away.

2/5

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