The In Crowd

A girl with head issues is released from a psychiatric hospital and given another chance to re-enter society as the “summer help” at a rich, snooty country club. Soon enough, she is taken into the fold of the inner rich, snooty kids who seem to enjoy her company. It isn’t long before the truth of the matter unfolds, and things begin to get real nasty.

Lots of hard bodies, not enough T&A, a semi-interesting setup, not enough unpredictability, a few decent actors, but not enough good ones make this film watchable and somewhat of a guilty pleasure, but certainly not good enough to recommend on any sort of enthusiastic level. Sure I enjoyed watching the boys and girls frolicking around on the beach. Sure I liked the whole “which girl is the bigger psycho bitch” angle which kept popping in and out of my head during the whole movie. And sure I did enjoy the whole over-the-top Denise Richards/Carmen Electra look-a-like performance by Susan Ward, but all in all, the film just didn’t click enough points of interest to be considered anything more than a teen soap-opera filmed for the big screen. In fact, as much as I did get into some of the story’s original setup, I couldn’t help but predict every coming moment as the film stepped forward.

And where was all the action? For a thriller, this film sure did spend a lot of time on the getting-to-know everyone scenario, and not enough on the actual moments of tension or suspense, all of which were conspicuously absent. Sure, I was never really bored during the flick, enjoyed the grandiose phoniness of the queen bitch and her make-up clad sprinkle girlfriends, and the performance put forth by Bobby aka Nathan Bexton. But other than the main trio, the rest of the cast was basically just a bunch of stale, one-dimensional characters, which under these circumstances didn’t bother me. With the focus on the primary two girls, the cardboard cutout designation of the secondary players just didn’t seem to matter that much to me. The film definitely does not need to be seen on the big screen, but might be enjoyed on a smaller level, if you’re bored at home one night, looking for a little cheesy fake fun, and like the ol’ crazy bitch on the loose type flicks, rent it and get a bonus shot of Susan Ward’s breasts to boot (although more sex and definitely more skin would have appreciated by this film’s teen target audience…what were they thinking?). But I guess that’s why the lesbian under-and-overtones were tossed into the mix, eh?

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian