At last: A teen thriller with an original storyline! OK, so it's not terribly watertight ... but we can't have everything. It's still one of the more suspenseful, intriguing and visually stylish movies in the genre. We're in a posh boarding school in Britain, where four rich kids have decided to ditch a boring geography field trip to Wales and hide in an abandoned underground bunker for the weekend (erm, these are rich kids; couldn't they have just gone to a B&B?). The student mastermind nerd (Brocklebank) arranges everything for this sinister Breakfast Club: hot-shot jock Geoff (Fox), hunky son of an American rock star Mike (Harrington), beautiful bimbo Frankie (Knightley) and desperate frump Liz (Birch). But something has gone horribly wrong in the hole, trapping them inside for two nightmarish weeks. As we piece the story together afterwards, we soon realise that the events Liz relates to the police psychologist (Davidtz) are probably not very accurate.

This flashback structure works nicely, as it presents the events then slowly reveals what really happened, letting the scenes take on much more haunting, creepy tones until the full horror is revealed. And then things get even more disturbing. Birch is superb as the unreliable teen--she seems so innocent and hard-done-by, and yet there's something cruel lurking underneath. In fact, all five of the teen characters have layers of interesting depth to them that change as we see the story from various perspectives ... right up until we finally discover the truth. Hamm directs the film with a dark energy we would never have suspected from his debut feature (Martha Meet Frank et al); the film looks terrific and uses editing, sound and music to make us squirm in our seats. There's also a vein of sharp humour that keeps things relatively believable, despite some glaring implausibilities (like, how did they get hundreds of candles into those tiny rucksacks?). But the best thing of all is the scary, over-the-top examination of teen angst--The Breakfast Club gone very bad indeed!

themes, language, violence, nudity

17.Apr.01

R E A D E R   R E V I E W S

kiara, bronx new york: "well some thing i really dont do often is watch moviez, but this 1 loved, especially becuase Desmond Harrington was in it, because he is a really good actor. but this movie is 1 of the best i've ever seen, even though its from 2001. i still loved it no matter what" (27.Mar.06)