As a kid, I remember strolling down the aisle of B&J Video: a video store in New Winchester1, Indiana, run by Bill and Jean, who opened it in their barn way outside of town so that they could rent porn out of the back room without getting in trouble. I didn’t know that at the time, and Bill and Jean were always very nice to me, but the memory of their smiling faces will always be tied to the first time I realized there’s more to friendly older people than the image they present, not unlike movies and their covers. In the 90s, there was an art to VHS boxes; like any good marketing, they could tell you what a movie was about, draw you in with the promise of some flesh peeling monster you can’t look away from, or explicitly communicate that the movie would have plenty of sex. I’ll let you judge what the VHS cover for Wild Things (1998) communicates.
To me, the box communicated, “Not a good movie.” Sex felt like a way to hack your way to success. To scratch the most basic itch of a relative-to-today media-starved populace. Sex sells! While this is true sometimes, I was often guilty of being a cynic.
With an opening sequence as moody and stylish as any season of True Detective, aerial shots take us from sunrise on the Everglades, over brackish water, through the suburbs, and to Miami. In one neighborhood, Blue Bay High School students assemble to hear Mr. Lombardo (Matt Dillon) give a presentation. A POV shot shows us his view as he walks to the assembly hall, and high school girls laugh and swoon as he passes. “Did you see his eyes?” one girl asks. Kelly Van Ryan (Denise Richards) sits in the front row for the assembly, eying Mr. Lombardo with intent. Mr. Lombardo proceeds to quiet the assembly and then, in a hilarious bit of foreshadowing, writes SEX CRIMES on a blackboard to his left. (Foreshadowing is too subtle a word for this action.) Mr. Lombardo then introduces two police who will be speaking on the subject.
Sergeant Ray Duquette (Kevin Bacon) takes the stage. One woman in the crowd, Suzie Toller (Neve Campbell), storms out, creating a large scene. They have a history. “What is a sex crime?” Sgt. Duquette asks Socratically. One student shouts, “Not getting any!” to the raucous laughter of the other students, and then, before Sgt. Duquette can impart any wisdom: the film cuts to cheerleaders practicing their routines on the green. Regarding sex crimes, we hear as much as I generously assume the film means to tell us what the students hear. Nada.
Kelly pursues Mr. Lombardo over the next couple of scenes until she finally gets him alone in his house. She enters, they look at each other, and then we cut to a high shot outside the home. She exits, one side of her shirt torn. At first she walks toward the street, and when she gets to the street, she starts to run. What happened inside? Wild Things might not have a reputation for being great, but you’ll be surprised at how interested you are to see where the story goes, like flipping through the channels (when people still did that) and getting stuck on something that looks half-interesting.
90s needle drops abound. Third Eye Blind? Yup. A Smash Mouth ska cover of Why Can’t We Be Friends? Yup. Wild Things is a perfect representation of the 90s, the era of film just before sexless comic book films and sexless IP would take over the world. That being said, it’s also a good representation of another era in that, even at only 26 years old, the subtle biases with which women are treated in matters of consent feel as dated as they should. (Massive trigger warning for this film: it centers around alleged rape and contains descriptions of such.) Despite all of this, Wild Things will still surprise the hell out of you in plot and execution. It’s got a surprisingly funny Bill Murray performance. It’s a movie about money, power, deceit, human nature, and of course, sex.
Don’t judge Wild Things by it’s VHS cover. And don’t watch the trailer. Take a chance on this seeming shlock-shocker from the 90s. Like the back room at Bill and Jean’s video store, there’s more to it than you might think.
Wild Things
Written by Stephen Peters; Directed by John McNaughton
1998
115 minutes
English
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Streaming on Netflix
You’ll like this if you like: Gone Girl (2014), Basic Instinct (1992), Wild Things 2 (2004), Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough (2005), or Wild Things: Foursome (2010)