DISTURBING BEHAVIOR
The most frightening thing of all: Mormons!
Damn, do I hate that fuckin' Flys song. It's in this movie no less than three times. It just makes me want to KILL KILL KILL
Phew, must calm down...
Okay, guys, for real now.
Disturbing Behavior tells the story of Steve, a clean cut high school kid from Chicago who moves to Crescent Bay with his family and immediately starts hanging out with the stoners, for some reason. (perhaps because in British Columbia, where this was obviously filmed, stoners were the only people they could find)
The stoners inform him of a sinister menace infiltrating their school - Mormons!
Okay, they're not actually explicitly referred to as Mormons, but you can tell. It's pretty obvious. They're relentlessly wholesome, they're all smiles and sunshine, they only hang out with each other, and they're always trying to convert you. If these guys ain't Mormons, my rabbit doesn't have big ears.
Now, I, more than most people, can appreciate how scary Mormons are. Next to Utah, Calgary has the highest concentration of these creepy people in the world, I think. I've had them run across a busy street to try to convert me, and when I made it damn clear I wasn't interested, they asked me if I knew any single mothers, or unwed pregnant women. (I did, but they'd have to beat her name out of me with a baseball bat) Eerie, man.
But here, it just doesn't work. The film fails to really capture what it is that makes Mormons scary. The Mormons in this movie just aren't wholesome enough. They try seduction (yeah, right), they engage in oral sex (hah!), they go batshit every time they get horny. (horny Mormons? C'mon, when's the last time a Mormon tried sticking a tongue in your ear?)
Things are not helped by some really senseless moments - like when one guy is bound up to a chair but frees himself with a scalpel we never saw him obtain. Or (is this fucked or what?) when Steve laments of his late, older brother, "If only he would have made it to his teens..." when the guy had killed himself a mere eight months before (which would make Steve, what, ten?).
A distracting, consistently bad rock soundtrack doesn't help, but Bill Sadler is a hoot, vocally unrecognizable with a New England accent, as the rat-loathing janitor who's probably autistic.
This film, simply put, is a mess - seemingly cobbled together at a pace far too quick for any sensible movie to emerge from. There were a number of good ideas here, but nothing to get too worked up about.
Alas, the definitive Mormon horror movie has yet to be made.