by Jerry Roberts
July 14, 2002
The Internet Movie Database has a section of goofs for this movie, if you ask me, this whole movie belongs there.
If you pitched the basic premise of “The Skulls” to your best friend, he would probably laugh at you. Were this a comedy that would be fine, but this is a serious thriller in which you keep asking “are they serious?”
This is a movie so unbelievably ridiculous that you keep watching just to see what the director will have the nerve to come up with next. Here is a thriller so predictable that you find yourself counting down the seconds until the line “It’s over” is uttered (and not by the audience).
Joshua Jackson, one of the swaggering hose-monkeys of Dawson’s Creek, stars as a poor college kid named Luke McNamara who works in a cafeteria, rides a bike and is the star of the Varsity rowing team. These seem to be his only activities because the college in this movie is one of those Movie Colleges where no one ever goes to class and everyone looks like a blue jeans model. The name of this institution is never mentioned even though it takes place in New Haven and the school logo is a big “Y”. Hmmmm
The school has a secret society named The Skulls (obviously patterned after Yale’s “Skull and Bones” but changed to prevent a lawsuit). Luke is tapped for The Skulls via a phone call that has him running from one phone to the next and drinking water that renders him unconscious.
The following scene had me falling out of my chair laughing, The Skulls new recruits wake up in a watery basement each in their own individual coffin (which are laid on their own individual island) where they arise in their new lives. Then they have The Skulls logo burned into their wrists and are given the rule book. They are also given a new sports car, a new watch (to cover the branded logo) and a hooker at their pledge party. Boy, where do I sign up?
The Skulls’ clubhouse looks like something out of a Cecil B. Demill biblical epic with stone walls and columns and arches and that strange “Y” hanging over the proceedings.
Luke’s best friend Will (Hill Harper) gets too curious about The Skulls and steals the clubhouse key and rule book from, Luke’s pledge brother Caleb (Paul Walker). This leads to Will’s death which we can see coming because 1.) he’s too nosey and 2.) he is the black guy in a movie that requires someone to die.
Luke begins inquiring about Will’s death (there's . . . no investigation by the way) which is followed by the inevitable warning not to get too nosey. The death is ruled a suicide but when he finds evidence that it was murder at the hands of one of the club’s head honchos, Luke is drugged and sent to a mental institution for psychiatric evaluation.
I wasn’t at all surprised that the movie contained a car chase but I swear I slapped my hand to my forehead when the movie ended with Luke and Caleb agreeing to pistols at ten paces on the campus grounds (they have a concrete porch intricately carved just for the proceedings).
My mouth was agape and my brain was numb during much of The Skulls, not so much for it’s sheer stupidity but for it’s willingness to do anything for a gasp. This is a movie that really does leave you asking "Y".
