Contemporary horror flick with a standard premise. This flick is about a teen stumbling across an evil conspiracy that is turning the teenagers of a small town into well dressed, well groomed, intelligent students that resort to homicide when angry.
Katie Holmes is totally wasted in a supporting role. Excessive pre-release cutting damaged what could have been one of the best teen horror films of the 90's. This could have been a very emotional, haunting and even touching film with a disturbing ending. What is left now is a teen driven, cold, and chainsaw edited flick with a poor gimmicky ending. Still some signs of intelligent intentions shine through, the performances for the most part are unusually good, and the director does a fine job of building up a paranoid, crazed sense of atmosphere.
Rated R; Violence, Sexual Situations, Nudity, Drug Use, Drinking, and Profanity all involving teenagers.
The original cut would merit a * * *1/2 rating.
