THE INITIATION
Gotta love that box art
Features a candle carved like a sensuous woman, melting all over the place. Yeah, that's what I do for the ladies. : P
This flick starts well with an enjoyably convoluted setup, but degenerates into a rather routine slasher flick in the second half.
Daphne Zuniga (mmm...yummy) has dreams of herself, as a little girl, walking in on her mom and dad having sex, and shen she does what any dutiful little girl would do, and stabs him in the knee, twice. Then a strange man wearing a suit comes in, grapples with the man...well, liquor is spilled, and the next thing you know, somehow, the guy in the suit's on fire.
Flash forward about fifteen years, and this girl's trying to get into a cult-like sorority that's about to lose some members. Part of her initiation dues is to break into her father's shopping mall (a huge, ten-storey thing, unlike any mall I've seen) and steal the security guard's uniform. Two other pledges and some frat boys are along for the ride. Unluckily for them, some inmates have escaped from the local cracker factory, one of them being the burn-scarred crazy trowel-wielding groundskeeper.
I loved the setup, but really, the payoff just kind of fizzled. Nothing happens here that we haven't seen before in a slasher flick, except the absurd and intriguing (spoiled if you've seen Terror In The Aisles) surprise at the end.
A distracting enough time waster, but not much more. Good to see that Zuniga went on to bigger things like "Melrose Place" (note how I didn't say "better"...).