Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

Disturbing Behavior (1998) Oh oh! It seems something strange is happening to the kids at Steve's new school. The "bad kids" are transforming one by one into the Blue Ribbon bunch, overachievers with a slight penchant for violence and murder. Can Steve (James Marsden) and new girlfriend Rachel (Katie Holmes-TV's Dawson's Creek) maintain their identities long enough to solve the mystery? This one can't get past the fact that it is cribbed from so many other movies (The Stepford Children, Strange Behavior). Also, though Marsden and Holmes are okay, there's not enough character development here for them to sink their teeth into. The most telling factor is that the distribution company believed they had a dog on their hands and chopped this down to a bare bones 74 minutes. This does keep the film moving along, but a little more character development or a few more "quiet moments" might have helped flesh this out. Character actor William Sadler (Die Hard 2) spices things up as a brighter-than-he-looks school janitor, but he can't save this one. Skip it. Also with Nick Stahl, Bruce Greenwood, and Steve Railsback.

Loner Steve Clark (James Marsden) and his family have just moved from Chicago to an idyllic village in the northwest. As he starts school, Steve finds the usual cliques, the strangest being a group called "the Blue Ribbons;" they're the handsomest jocks and most beautiful co-eds and seem perfect but have a bad habit of beating people up - and getting away with it. Steve is befriended by a stoner (Nick Stahl) and a punk girl (Katie Holmes) who share his suspicions about the Blue Ribbons. Can they solve the mystery - in time?!

First of all, James Marsden is way too good-looking, charming, and old to play the outsider teen. He's extremely likeable and sincere, however, and was the only reason I kept watching to the end, hoping this confusing mess would make sense. I guess it did have a plot, but it was so poorly written that it's pretty laughable. There was nothing in the story that seemed believeable. The teen and adult characters were all stereotypes, the Marsden and Holmes characters suddenly became brilliant detectives and figured out an evil plan to turn the student body into Stepford Teens, and zombies, it seems, are really dumb and apparently no one will notice if they all disappear.

For a so-called "thriller," this movie was not suspenseful at all, just silly and amateurish. (But James Marsden looks good.)