The Geek Address

Cradle Bay seems nice, peaceful - somewhere Steve Clarke and his family can move, settle down and forget about the past. But Cradle Bay, with its high proportion of clean-cut, impossibly wholesome teenagers, isn’t what it seems. Something sinister is going on. Cue the spooky music.

While most teens are out bonking, boozing and smoking dope the kids of Cradle Bay are baking apple pies, eating frozen yoghurt and ironing their cardigans. I wonder what Scott Rosenberg was thinking when he wrote the screenplay for Disturbing Behaviour: “Hmmmm. What’s something that’s really gonna scare the living crap out of people? How about a knife-wielding psychopath that stabs a bunch of teens to death in a film filled with witty intertextual references? No…I think that’s been done before. How about a giant lizard that runs amok in New York? No, I get the feeling that’s been done, too. How about…wait, I’ve got it! A movie set on an island populated by inordinately polite teenagers. Now that’s a scary premise!”

Steve Clarke (played by James Marsden) is the film’s hunky protagonist. Only problem is, Marsden looks a little old for the role. It’s about time Hollywood stopped casting twenty-something actors as high school students. Puhleese. I mean, seriously, are we really supposed to believe this guy is a teenager? I felt like standing up in the middle of the cinema and shouting, “Hey, Stevie! You call that cologne? Smells more like formaldehyde to me! Get back to the nursing home,  you stupid old fart! And take that walking frame with you!” Let’s face it…if you’re  a male watching Disturbing Behaviour, you’ll spend most of your time staring at Katie Holmes. Miss Holmes was never going to win an Academy Award for Disturbing Behaviour (unless there was a category for Best Voluptuous Dance In The Back of A Pick-Up Truck) but she puts in a pretty impressive performance.

One of the most interesting characters in the film is Mr Newberry - a deceptively dimwitted, rat-obsessed janitor. Newberry, who’s got “the full on Boo Radley, village idiot, Quasimodo thing going”, is played by William Sadler who delivers an entertaining, delightfully kooky performance.

Disturbing Behaviour is directed by David Nutter, who rose to prominence as a director of The X-Files. Nutter’s visual style means that the entire film looks and feels like an extended episode of The X-Files (sans Mulder and Scully, of course). Although Disturbing Behaviour received a critical drubbing, the film is a an entertaining blend of science-fiction and horror - one of the more memorable horror flicks pumped out by the studios during the late nineties.