Disturbing Behavior (1998)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Sorry, this movie sucks

I'll tell you why so serious

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Disturbing Behavior (1998): Dir: David Nutter / Cast: James Marsden, Katie Holmes, Nick Stahl, William Sadler, Bruce Greenwood: Follows the trend of hacked up teenagers and loud music and this one ranks amongst the worst of them. One young lady bashes her head into a mirror then says, "I have to go home. I have a physics exam tomorrow." Perhaps it was her reaction to reading the script sober and she was looking for an excuse to leave the set. Ripoff of the far superior Invasion of the Body Snatchers only this one involves a scientific experiment to render teenagers perfect. They're kidding, right? I'm afraid society has long given up that quest and just hope that they avoid more meaningless projects such as this. A family moves into town and discover that the local kids are a tad strange. It could be a drug problem since that is generally to blame. This town looks constructed straight from other horror films, only this time they should burn it so not to repeat this mistake again. Director David Nutter shamelessly attempts to make this garbage look original but who is he kidding? Laughable performances by James Marsden, Katie Holmes, Nick Stahl, and William Sadler as a crazed janitor. Their mission is to die in creative methods because the screenwriter cares about as much as we do. Pointless crap showcases someone getting their head bashed in with a pipe. That is exactly what should happen to the film. Score: 0 / 10

Back in late April of this year I was searching threw the Netflix vault of titles and came across this film it looked good to me having that late 90's Scream vibe to the cover,a solid looking cast, & I was in the desire to watch a film I haven't seen before so that's what lead to me watching it and watching it more than four times.Disturbing Behavior(1998) is a film about a family who moves to a city where they intend to start fresh lives after the death of their son & brother and one of the family members the other son goes to a High School where he runs into group of peers Gavin(a rebellious cocky likable guy),UV(a major pot-head) & Rachel(the love interest of the film).One of the new found Friends Gavin portrayed by Terminator 3:Rise of the Machine's Nick Stahl suspects something off with the other kids of the school of whom he used to be good friends with and the new friend Steve(X-Men's James Marsden) thinks he's just nuts.The film goes on to show you a deep routed family conflict dealing with the passing of the deceased family member and also features Katherine Isabelle(of Freddy Vs. Jason & Ginger Snaps fame) as Steve's sister.The film then reveals the mystery of the film by having Gavin become a member of the Blue Ribbons and to show you very subtly the Janitor knows something is up too.The film then goes to explain that their's this corporation who takes children with odd ,unfavorable & etc, behavior and controls them to doing their biding then it's up for Steve and Rachel to stop it.Now this film is actually very good in my eyes it could've been a masterpiece if everything was left alone in the film tough because of my knowledge on this film a whole bunch of scenes had to be cut for the DVD Home Video release of the film and you could tell because some of the film feels lacking and some of the characters just needed more time to develop.The film's main strength is in how it slowly reveals the intriguing mystery beyond the story it's nice tone and setting and not to mention score.This film also features many similarities to another film of the same year or year before called The Faculty(now I also enjoyed that film) and that begs the question which is the better film we'll that's a hard question because I love both films very much but their must be decided victor between the two so let's dissect the strengths and weaknesses of both films of which they both have: The Faculty's strength is more in the characters of which is understandable because that film didn't have to sacrifice so much so for bulls!t reasoning behind the studios and getting to understand their traits and to have some witty Kevin Willamson dialogue in the film.Disturbing Behavior's strength is in it's mythology of the corporation and setting and atmosphere.It is truly sad Disturbing Behavior had to trim down it's character elements because I have a deeper interest in their back-story and the events their going through whereas The Faculty just offered me character development to characters of which I'm not to interested in their story.Disturbing Behavior is a good film regardless just if it was a lot less messed around with it would be a lot better in my eyes.My Next Review will be of:Halloween(2007) coming within a few days of this reviews postage I hope I brought some interesting insight to the film and didn't come off dumb in this review as this is my first review for IMDb.

A teenager named Steve Clark (Jamie Marsden of X-Men fame), moves with his family to a small town called Cradle Bay in Washington State after leaving Chicago due to his older brother committing suicide. He encounters outcast stoners named Gavin Strick (Nick Stahl) and U.V. (Chad Donella). They're at the bottom of the social ladder at Cradle Bay HS. Steve also meets the Blue Ribbons, a type of Phi Beta Kappa-esque group of seemingly civic-minded student athletes. They seem like typical high achievers at first, but they're violent elitists, given to random acts of bullying, intimidation, assault and seen in the opening scene, murder. Before participating in the mysterious Program run by the resident school psychologist, some of the Blue Ribbons' leaders were once good friends of Gavin and U.V. It seems that Gavin, Steve and Rachel Wagner (Katie Holmes), Gavin's only other friend and Steve's love interest, are the only ones that truly take notice of the Blue Ribbons destructive nature while parents and community leaders look the other way. On the plus side, they did have an interesting idea of an almost cult-like group of student high achievers along with some creepy scenes seen with the 'recruiting' they do. The negatives, they give in to stereotyping, with jocks, stoners and social outcasts. The most disturbing thing about this movie may be the idea of some misguided educator deciding that the 'bad students' need to be improved through aggressive Pavlovian conditioning.

When Steve moves with his family to Cradle Bay and enrols in the local high school, he's not sure where he fits in with the local crowds. He doesn't really fit in with the diverse groups you would expect to find in a typical American high school. Steve looks like one of the jocks, but they don't seem quite right. The jocks seem perfect with their matching jackets, hair cuts, charity work, and perfect behaviour that would make any parent proud. When Steve befriends two social misfits of the school, Gavin and Rachel, he soon discovers why the jocks are so perfect.....It's virtually a remake of The Stepford Wives, with troublesome teens being replaced, or 'upgraded' to be the perfect child. Unfortunately, Rodriguez beat the makers to it with the wonderful The Faculty, which had the good will to be very tongue in cheek, and exploit its B-movie heritage.This film takes itself way too seriously, and spends too much time explaining the maguffin if the film, rather than just going all bonkers like its premise and having fun with it.The cast are okay, but come the end of it, it's just like all the other high school movies that were released in 1999, and when you think about it, there were a stupid amount, and this was one of the poorest.At least Katie Holmes is easy on the eye.Boring stuff, otherwise....