The depictions of teenagers in movies really makes me ill most of the time. High school is so often shown as a washed-out unrealistic happy white-boy paradise that it seems like no one has any recollections of what actually happened. Teens are whimpering children, unable to handle the slightest problem. Teen horror flicks are the worst offenders. In almost every case, they could easily handle their tormentors if they just procured a handgun.
While flawed, at least "Disturbing Behavior" doesn't suffer from wimpy teens. The movie centers around the island community of Cradle Bay. Cradle Bay seems perfect (of course), but it has a deep dark secret (of course). It seems that the most perfect-seeming teens of Cradle High are also darkly homicidal.
The Blue Ribbons are the club from hell, their main loves being bake sales, good grades, abstinence in all its forms and (horror of horrors) frozen yogurt. They are the football captains, the straight-A machines, the beautiful overly preppy ass-kissers. They're the ones most teens hate and all adults love. But these overachievers aren't products of nature or nurture, but instead of Dr. Caldicott, the school psychiatrist. Apparently, his Weekend Enlightenment Seminars can turn the angriest rebel into a clean-cut Ribbon.
"Disturbing Behavior" opens with a shocker of an opening scene. It takes the most typical teenage scene in the world, the age-old parking ritual, and suddenly turns it on its head, into a brutal double murder. When the sheriff lets the Blue Ribbon walk away after gunning down his partner and snapping the neck of his girlfriend, it quickly becomes clear that something is definitely wrong with this town. Unbeknownst to the psycho-jock and his enabler, the entire scene is witnessed by loner Gavin (Nick Stahl), who realizes more is wrong with the Blue Ribbons than their unholy love of bake sales.
Into this topsy-turvy world walks Steve (James Marsden). A recent Cradle Bay import from Chicago, Steve sends way too many warning signs to the school administration early. His brother died in Chicago (a plotline which is never really explored) and even more disturbing, he seems uninterested in extracurriculars!
Steve exudes enough loner-cool to attract Gavin, who takes on the job of introducing him to Cradle Bay High's messed-up scene. Gavin breaks down the cliques with impeccably written wit and introduces him to Rachel (the stunning Katie Holmes), undisputed alterna-babe-queen of school.
Soon enough, of course, the sinister Blue Ribbons take interest in Gavin, Steve and Rachel with fairly predictable results. The coolness is how the characters take the teen-thriller journey, not the stops along the way. Instead of the dejected resignation of most teen-victim characters, these guys take the Ribbons head on, scrapping with them at every turn.
When it becomes clear that the Ribbons are gunning for Steve, he doesn't wait around for adult help. He attempts to grab his sister and get the hell off the island! I mean, how many movies have we seen where everyone would survive and be hunky-dory if they just made a break for it! When he can't get away, he fights with the brutality necessary to the situation, rather than some idealized, sanitized overly moral hero-style.
Finally, a movie where the heroes are the smoking, drinking kids who actually are interested in the opposite sex. The subversive subtext may be the coolest part of the whole movie. After all, here's a situation where the overachievers actually are evil. Where abstinence makes healthy kids into psychos.
But the message goes further than that. While some may see the lack of any explanation for the adults' almost universal complacency, I believe that it represents the true teenage conspiracy. To a teenager, the opposition of parents and police and teachers and all modes of authority is just a given. Of course no adult questions their the sudden transformation of their children. They're getting straight A's, aren't they? They're living up to their potential, aren't they?
"Disturbing Behavior" has major problems, it's true. It's way too short, way too much goes unexplained and the makers don't explore some of the most interesting aspects of their plot. Still, it's tons of fun and a validation for the slacker in each and every single one of us.
