The Skulls (2000)

The Skulls (2000): Dir: Rob Cohen / Cast: Paul Walker, Joshua Jackson, Craig T. Nelson, Leslie Bibb, Christopher McDonald: Ridiculous thriller that tries to take itself seriously but hardly avoid being a joke. The Skulls is a secret society of complete morons. Those chosen are drugged and awaken in coffins where they await assignments to prove worthy a Skull. The results are a life of luxury, expensive cars, a rule book, and acceptance to the college of choice. The Skull mark is burned on their wrist and covered with a wrist watch. Paul Walker and Joshua Jackson are chosen as soul mates but it is obvious that they will be pitted against each other by the film's end and it is all about as suspenseful as a game of tag. Laughable setup trudges into formula with only a conclusion to aid it when conviction is brought on. Directed by Rob Cohen who has proved capable of a variety of projects, many of them bad. Among his directing credits are Dragonheart and Daylight. Asides from Jackson and Walker living the life of total bull here, there is wasted supporting work by Craig T. Nelson and Leslie Bibb. While many recent thrillers are laughable, this pretty much takes the cake on stupidity. While a thriller about secret societies can be interesting, this one is by the numbers and about as funny as a game of Checkers. It is a laughable teen horror film that should be locked in a coffin and never surface again. Score: 2 / 10

It's clear, just from my 10/10 review of this movie I have terrible taste. But I mean it. Please read my other reviews and don't trust a word. Seriously, this movie is a quintessential bad 90's movie. And I love it. Suspend your reality for 2 hours and watch this movie. Joshua Jackson as THE athletic star of THE crew team at an Ivy League school (unnamed, but I think winking and nodding with the jerseys with Y on it say it all). I've never seen such a scrawny crew member in my life. Paul Walker as an IVY LEAGUE student. SUSPEND REALITY. It's worth it. Paul Walker is one of my favorite actors of all time because he cannot silent the surfer boy inside himself. These two men, coupled with fraternity bro dialog, it has everything. Remember, skulls are forever. Skulls are soul mates. We are watching you all the time. You get 20g's and a car. An implied racially charged storyline. Did you know, that if you really wanted to find out who was a skull, you JUST have to take off their watch. I spent the last 2 hours giggling like a little school girl and I couldn't be happier. There is nothing real about this movie but I don't think that's the point. Twelve years after its release, its laughable at best, but it will put a smile on your face the whole time.

I never expected this movie to be well-written or have good acting. I knew I was going to be watching something poorly done. It looked like trash, but maybe it would at least be fun. It isn't.Joshua Jackson is invited to join the secret society, The Skulls, based on a real network that supposedly includes many powerful, influential people. The kids who enter into this world as college students will have many doors opened up for them as they enter the workforce and maneuver through life's challenges. Except that Joshua Jackson's character, Lucas, starts to feel morally conflicted about some of the things that happen.I think I was hoping to see the decadent or possible sleazy side of having these advantages. I would have enjoyed a movie in which a decent kid gets overwhelmed with having easy access to money and power, and watch it all spin out of control. Except that this movie keeps everything very tidy and PG. The main plot point is set up when Lucas' best friends infiltrates the secret society to do an expose, and ends up dying accidentally. The cover-up does not sit well with Lucas, and the movie turns into a routine thriller as he tries to make things right with the full power of the corrupt Skull network rising against him. I say that the movie is "routine" because it does things that we have seen in so many other movies in the same genre.So it ended up being pretty boring, never really getting crazy or trashy enough to be memorable. I thought it was a waste of time, even for a teen-themed action thriller. I wouldn't even recommend it for an evening when you had nothing better to do, because there are plenty of movies that are fun and easy to watch. You don't have to subject to yourself to something that offers no pleasure just because you have time to waste.

THE SKULLS deals with an interesting subject but never overcomes a murky script that seems to go nowhere until the final sequences.Two young freshmen are at the centerpiece of the story about a mysterious organization called "The Skulls" that seems to offer rich rewards for joining a secret society. JOSHUA JACKSON and PAUL WALKER are the two young men and CRAIG T. NELSON is Walker's father who wants his wealthy son to make it into the society.The acting is decent enough, especially by Jackson, and Craig T. Nelson is earnest as the overbearing father but the murky plot is a stumbling block all the way through. The sets are handsomely designed and the technical credits are fine but none of the characters are particularly interesting and the viewer becomes uninvolved in a story that lacks sufficient tension to pull the whole thing together.Good try, but having a relatively unknown cast filling all of the roles doesn't help much. As a suspense thriller, could have been so much tighter, so much better.