Thanks to reader Jason Alley for requesting this week’s review. As always, for instructions on how to request the next review for this feature (to run in two weeks) see the bottom of this post.
A few years ago, a friend jokingly referred to me as an “art movie snob.” At first, I practically recoiled at the suggestion, but then he explained his reasoning- “think of the first section you go to when you walk into a video store. Some of us, we’ll hit the cult classics or the horror movies, but every time I go with you, you always head straight for the foreign films.” And you know, he was right. As a moviegoer, I tend to be drawn to more artistically edifying cinema, and even though I’ve tried to become more versed in genre filmmaking in the intervening years, truth is I’ve still got a lot of catching up to do. All of which is, I suppose, a roundabout way of saying that The New Kids wasn’t really the kind of movie I would normally seek out. But thanks to reader Jason Alley, I caught up with the film for this week’s Reviews by Request column, and while it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, I found it sort of fascinating.
When Jason requested the film for review, he pitched it to me by saying “it’s like Straw Dogs directed by John Hughes.” He wasn’t far off the mark. The New Kids tells the story of Loren and Abby McWilliams (Shannon Presby and Lori Loughlin), a pair of Army brats who have recently moved to Florida following the deaths of their parents. Soon after, Loren and Abby run afoul of a gang of redneck bullies at their high school, led by Eddie Dutra (a young James Spader). The gang begins by menacing the attractive Abby, and when she rebuffs them, they respond by defacing the amusement park where they live with their uncle. But as the film progresses, the threats become more dangerous, until we see how crazy Dutra and his gang really are.
Okay, so the story isn’t exactly groundbreaking. Hell, it even provides a colorfully weird backdrop for the film’s climactic showdown. Yet The New Kids is made with a kind of brutal efficiency that makes it sort of charming. The tone is set early on when we see Loren and Abby exercising with their Army officer father (played by quintessential That Guy! Tom Atkins). Then, not five minutes after he’s been introduced, Atkins is dead. Never an explanation- just gone. The whole film is like that, never explaining anything or going into unnecessary detail, which I found refreshing in our time of bloated genre films that feel the need to dot every I.
The New Kids has no agenda except to be a lean thriller. Sean S. Cunningham, best known for directing the original Friday the 13th paints his story in broad strokes, with sympathetic protagonists and irredeemable villains. Yet sometimes some small bits of character business sneak in through the cracks. For example, I found it interesting how the film treats Loren’s more chivalric side. Every time he defends his sister or his family from Dutra, he doesn’t come off as simply heroic, but a little crazy himself, and his actions usually only serve to make the situation even worse.
Somehow, in the middle of it all, James Spader gives a surprisingly fine performance- surprising not because of Spader but because of the somewhat disposable nature of the film, in which one wouldn’t normally find memorable acting. But Spader makes for a genuinely frightening villain, mostly by projecting a kind of charismatic chilliness that almost imperceptibly segues into madness. Spader’s performance is a marvel of economy, with next to no wasted gestures. Look at the scene where he rallies his gang to chase down Abby after she escapes, where he cocks a shotgun and says, “let’s go hunting.” Rather than playing up the cheesiness of the line, Spader says it calmly, like he would if he’s about to shoot a squirrel, and as a result it’s more chilling than any overacting he might otherwise have done.
Most of The New Kids is fairly standard-issue revenge movie material, but the climactic faceoff between Dutra’s gang and Loren and Abby is pretty fascinating stuff, mostly because Cunningham shoots much of it from the point of view of the villains who are trying to find the heroes, rather than the heroes who are hiding and sneaking around. To be honest, I’m not sure this was intentional on Cunningham’s part, given his background in horror movies, but whether he meant to shoot the scene this way, it’s strangely compelling. At this point, the film becomes a kind of hybrid between slasher movie and revenge drama that I don’t think I’ve seen before. And then there’s the final scene, which plays like a combination of sick joke and setup for a sequel that never got made.
As I said before, The New Kids isn’t exactly what I’d call “my kind of movie.” But one of the goals of Reviews by Request is to broaden my horizons, to shine a light into shadowy corners of cinema that I might not have peered into otherwise. In the end, The New Kids isn’t a classic by any yardstick, but it’s certainly the kind of movie I can imagine becoming a cult object given half a chance, much as I’m told it already has among Jason (our intrepid requester) and his friends.
Previously on Reviews by Request:
Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (1972, Kenji Misumi)
Zulu (1964, Cy Endfield)
Baxter (1989, Jérôme Boivin)
So, what movie would you like me to review for the next installment of Reviews by Request? Let me know in the comments section below. To refresh your memory, here are the rules for requesting a movie to be reviewed: (1) it has to be a movie I haven’t seen, (2) it has to be available through Netflix, and (3) please only request one film. Other than that, anything is fair game. First to suggest a movie that qualifies gets their requested review. See you in two weeks!