Remember
high school, where kids learn to grow up and cover-up their own murders? That
is how things work at Crestview. The family income levels are sky-high, but not
so much the life expectancies. This is especially true for wrong-side-of-the-tracks
“undercrust” students, like Siouxsie Hess and her sister Alyson—her late sister
Alyson. When Hess schemes her way into detention to find out who was responsible
for her death, soulless entitled brats start dying like flies in Ben Browder’s Bad Kids of Crestview Academy (trailer here) which opens this Friday in New York.
Yes,
this is indeed the sequel to Bad Kids Go
to Hell that nobody expected. Fear not, this is a whole new class of
sociopaths, but the same bad karma still hangs over Crestview. There is some
seriously sinister business going on in the background, but Browder only gives
us glimpses. Instead, he focuses on the And
Then There Were None day in detention. For fans of the first film and the
graphic novels on which they are based, poor old Matt Clark is currently
cooling his heels in a criminal asylum for the mass murders he did not commit,
but it is probably safer for him there.
Thanks
to a hacker-for-hire, Hess will be sharing senior detention with Blaine Wilkes,
the senator’s son with serious mother issues, Faith Jackson, the promiscuous
daughter of the senator’s “spiritual advisor,” coked-up gay playboy, Brian “Latin
Spice” Marquez, and sexually confused, cat video-loving Sara Hasegawa. All four
were somehow involved in Alyson Hess’s murder. Collectively, they also start
dying during detention, which makes Siouxsie Hess the logical suspect.
Although
it can’t keep up with Joseph Kahn’s wildly frenetic Detention, Browder (probably best known as the lead in Farscape) sustains an admirably high
energy level. He also embraces the franchise’s black humor and sarcastic attitude.
There is truly no place for good taste or restraint at Crestview.
With
that in mind, Sammi Hanratty is really remarkably poised as Siouxsie Hess, the
film’s primary pinball. She keeps her head and maintains the audience’s focus
amid a whole lot of chaos. Erika Daly also earns points for making Hasegawa’s
naivete so weirdly distinctive. Speaking of weird, Browder gamely reprises his
original role as the anti-social school janitor, Max. However, Gina Gershon
upstages everyone as the flamboyantly evil and tart-tongued Sen. Wilkes.
