The Skulls

An outsider with a scholarship to an Ivy League college accepts his membership into a secret campus society called “The Skulls”, in order to improve his chances of getting into Harvard Law School. Once in, it isn’t long before he realizes that the rules of the club don’t exactly gel with his moral stance as a person.

Cheap thrills, cool soundtrack, so-so acting, a great looking co-star in Paul Walker and a Swiss cheese-esque story line could equal only one of two things. Either you ignore the plot holes and enjoy this flick as a guilty pleasure that it may just be, or you take it all very seriously and bag it in with the horde of other teen flicks which most critics hated. Overall, it appears as though most reviewers have raked this film over the coals a few times, but I for one enjoyed it as a low-rent version of a good thriller. It actually kept me interested for most of its run, offered a couple of twists and turns, as hokey as they were, and generally kept me entertained. Sure, it doesn’t make sense for a “secret” society to have their logo plastered all over the place, and have everyone on campus seemingly know about you, but for some reason, my suspension of disbelief stretched further in this movie than with most others. Perhaps it was because Mrs. JoBlo was tugging at my shirt during the proverbial chase scenes or because I was actually pretty curious about the whole premise, but whatever the reason was, the movie was an okay time.

Sprinkle it all with a couple of decent performances by its two male leads, one half of which is a young, better looking version of Rob Lowe, and one over-the-top “bad guy” presentation via TV’s “Coach” forever, Craig T. Nelson, and you can’t help but enjoy some of this film’s green eggs and ham! So does the film meet my expectations of what I wanted to know about these secret underground societies? Certainly not. The film seemed more interested in building a cat-and-mouse type scenario than truly delving into the actual power positions of some of the society’s members and seeing how they affected the rest of the world, but then again, the film does star a member of the popular “Dawson’s Creek” show. What did you expect? THE FIRM meets THE FUGITIVE? All in all, I would definitely recommend you check this movie out on video at least, but make sure that you go in with minor expectations, appropriate for the film’s minor thrills, minor drama and minor plot holes. And if you don’t mind a cheap thrill…this one’s definitely made for you!

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian