“Either you’re a connoisseur of melodramatic comic vulgarity, or you’re not. You know who you are.”- Roger Ebert, review of Wild Things, 1998
Ok where to start? Well, this movie was a wild ride. I admit, I came here for the sexy nineties vibes and stayed for the mystery. This movie definitely proved to be more than a glorified statutory-rape case story. Finally, by the end, it seemed to be empowering for the women involved.
So right off the bat I was confused by the creepy music. I didn’t watch the trailer or anything so I didn’t actually know how much of a crime investigation this movie was. I’d heard it served as inspiration for Spring Breakers, a far better movie in my opinion (but also sort of a different genre).
Anyways, I was stoked about it being set in Florida, seeing as I am currently in South Florida myself. Also, right off the bat I thought the shots of literal wild things in the form of wild animals were hilarious. And the movie keeps going with that. For instance, Lombardo has a tank of iguanas (vapor-wave lit, by the way) in his office.
So to briefly summarize, I thought the movie was going to be Lolita 2.0. It starts out with Kelly being all sexual and both Lombardo and her noticing each other for it. She’s all like, “I want to wash your car!” in this jail-baity way and he’s like, “sure” and I was like, “that’s weird.” I thought that the main bulk of the story was going to be Kelly and probably Kelly plus Susie slowly seducing Lombardo, the Atticus-Finch type hero. Boy was I wrong.
Despite being (literally) dripping wet from washing a car, thirst-trapping Kelly seems to not get the D, and then she suddenly turns around and accuses Lombardo of rape. I started to get bored. A rape investigation commences, and Susie is clearly in on it because she produces a completely incriminating testimony of her own rape story with Lombardo. Sidenote: while I was bored and disappointed by the movie at this point, I have to point out how uncomfortable Kelly’s videotaped testimony was to watch. At first I thought it had something to do with the plot, like, the reason she was making it so pornographic was to somehow further her seduction of Lombardo or something. But no…instead it just is. Maybe it’s just me but I swear they could have made that scene differently. Something about it felt voyeuristic. This comes up again when Kevin Bacon videotapes Kelly and Susie in the pool, but at least the plot calls him out on it later.
Ok, so I was bored until Lombardo gets back to his seedy vaporwave swamp motel room and Kelly is waiting in his bathroom like a serial killer. I still thought this movie was predictable so I was like, “hmm, maybe she’ll try to murder him,” but then it turns out they were in cahoots the whole time, and Susie’s there, and then I got interested.
I had to endure an uncomfortable sex scene first though, that legitimately felt like porn, complete with porn dialogue, and awful saxophone music.
Yeah so then the twists begin and you find out that everyone’s lying and no one knows the big picture except one single individual, and the movie does an excellent job of throwing the red-herrings at you thick and fast until the mastermind is revealed at the last moment.
I was getting really fed up with how shitty and abusive Kevin Bacon’s character was until I realized (probably really late in the game) that he was never meant to be the good guy. Which brings up a discussion point: what is up with this movie and Kevin Bacon?
First of all, I thought he was going to be portrayed as a hero cop, so I was annoyed with how the movie seemed to be giving him a free pass with all his (certainly illegal) violence towards the citizens he was supposed to be protecting. I was like, was this okay in the 90s? Like how the high schoolers are all heavily sexualized and not once is statutory rape brought up.
So you don’t find out about Kevin Bacon until pretty late in the game, but when you do he literally reveals himself by way of exposing the audience to his naked body, back and front. I never once asked to see Kevin Bacon’s dick, yet here we are.
Ok, so can we talk about how high schoolers have been sexualized in cinema up until, like, last year? I have numerous examples. For instance, of the past three Spiderman franchises, only the most recent one appears to portray actual high schoolers. The actors, for the most part, are still over eighteen, but at least they aren’t, like, thirty. And they chose actors that look like high schoolers. Also, in the new Spiderman, these kids feel to me to be a little more realistic in their maturity levels. Either society is infantilizing high schoolers these days, and kids really are maturing slower (debatable on whether or not this is a good thing), or they aren’t. I don’t know, I was never a high schooler in the eighties or nineties.
I think high schoolers in movies and tv have been hyper-sexualized for a long time and this hasn’t been questioned until recently. I think cinema has portrayed an inaccurate picture of what it’s like to be in high school, even if high schoolers before Y2K were more likely to get jobs and roam around freely and have sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. It is extremely clear from Wild Things that in the 90s, the sexualization of high schoolers for the entertainment of adults was fair game.
Okay, I just learned something new. Apparently the age of consent is sixteen in a lot of places. Not in Florida, where it is eighteen, but still. That surprises me. I thought it was eighteen everywhere. Learn something new every day.
Anyways, there are three possibilities: One, high schoolers are acting younger in real life and movies are portraying this reality. Two, high schoolers aren’t necessarily acting younger than in the past and movies are just portraying high schoolers with more reality these days. And three, high schoolers aren’t acting younger but movies are portraying them less accurately as younger and more innocent because they don’t want to catch flak about exploiting minors.
My hunch is that the truth lies somewhere between Possibility One and Possibility Two. Wild Things serves as a prime example of how high schoolers have been hyper-sexualized in movies, lending themselves to the whole teenage/teen and teacher porn genre, and that in real life teenagers are sexual but aren’t that sexual. Typically.
Then again, teenagers also don’t typically con an attorney, a guidance counselor, and a cop into facilitating a multi-million dollar heist and multiple deaths, including their own. So whatever. Obviously Wild Things is a lurid fever dream crime drama. Can’t complain.
A few more things:
This movie is a great example of how subverting expectations can work. I mean, it kind of became the movie’s entire personality, but the plot was set up to where the twists gave it momentum and expanded the story.
Looking back, especially in light of Spring Breakers, I wish this movie was more about the relationship between Kelly and Susie and how they intelligently manipulated the sexist expectations of the men around them for their own gain. That would have been way more interesting. I don’t think this movie passes the Bechdel test.
4.5/5 Stars
And finally, this movie majorly scratched my vaporwave itch. Enjoy some vaporwave ninties-inspo surreality images below to get a feel for the vibe.
