THE KIDS ARE NOT ALL RIGHT
★★★★☆ (Worth the Watch)
Director: Michael Laughlin
1981
Strange Behavior (also known as Dead Kids) is an unappreciated horror mystery that feels new despite its mundane premise: A serial killer is on the loose in a small town. While I’m gaga for this film, I acknowledge Strange Behavior is not perfect. The story takes place in Illinois, but it was filmed in New Zealand, and little things about the movie—a policeman not wearing a uniform, the DJ with the Aussie accent—give hints to its origins. You don’t feel like you’re in the Midwest, especially in those beautiful outdoor shots that look more like a rugged New Zealand than a rural America. There are other moments of the ridiculousness, such as the choreographed number at a costume party, a love letter to vintage horror which I actually adore. But despite its few faults, there are scares aplenty if you’re the sort of person who likes Halloween(1978) or It Follows. There are no screaming nuns or clowns, here.
I prefer the title Strange Behavior because Dead Kids makes the movie sound bargain-bin cheap, and this is not a cheap film. Laughlin had a talent for visuals and an understanding that “down time” is necessary for good horror; he was methodical, setting the mood using creaky gates, windy nights, and grumbling storms. Attacks happen in pools, or houses you thought were empty. Blood is used sparingly so that when we do see it, we're startled. Thanks to Laughlin’s ability to control your fear, you cringe when a character walks around a corner. To top it off, the score by Tangerine Dream is a fabulous mix of small-town pluckiness and fingernails scraping against a coffin. In my opinion, Strange Behavior is tied with Dead Alive as the most interesting and bizarre horror film to come out of New Zealand.
Pete (Dan Shor) is an affable high-school senior in the vein of Danny Noonan from Caddyshack—a decent-looking kid meandering though life and usually winning. He wants to submit an application to a school in another state, but his policeman father won’t hear of it and won’t pay the fee, so Pete goes behind his dad’s back and allows a strange laboratory on a nearby college campus to experiment on him for the money he needs. Besides this speedbump, life continues to be fairly easy for Pete. When he hears about the disappearance of the mayor’s son—a chilling and mesmerizing scene involving shadows—it doesn’t really affect his world, aside from the fact that his father is investigating the crime. Even finding the mayor’s son dead doesn’t stop the local teens from throwing a costume party, but the seriousness of the situation hits home later that night when Pete and his friends find a fellow student murdered.
The theme of the movie has much to do with the transition from kid to adult. A fourteen-year-old girl sneaks out to attend a party for high-schoolers and ends up getting in way over her head; in an early scene, Pete drives to school and waits as small children cross the street, one of many instances where his stage in life is amplified. Parents relax when their kids become teenagers because we believe they are safer, but Strange Behavior warns us that these teens are just a new kind of vulnerable. Pete now has the freedom to make choices on how he’s going to earn money, but his choice puts him in danger. This isn’t the only example of a character being affected by the decisions of early adulthood; our protagonist learns that his own father had scholarship offers from many Ivy League schools but he didn’t go because his girlfriend got pregnant. Though you won’t be able to get “Lightning Strikes” out of your head the rest of the night, Strange Behavior is a slasher flick worth seeing, one with an unusual message about what defines a parent—and when they should let their children go.
GENRES: Psychological, Serial Killer, Teens in Peril
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