The In Crowd

This pretentious little thriller from director Mary Lambert (Pet Sematary) about the J. Crew set behaving badly is less a trite, intellect-free foray in filmmaking than it is a shrewd exercise in teen-market targeting. The formula gets rolling when sultry psychiatric in-patient Adrien (Lori Heuring) gets furloughed and is handed a job at a posh beachfront country club. There she breaks through the staff-member barrier when Brittany (Susan Ward), the club's resident bombshell prima donna, takes her under her wing. The two party hearty with the ignoble trust-fund clique and get along sisterly, though both harbor dark secrets: Brittany is sibling-obsessed, and Adrien's committal had to do with delusional romantic fantasies about her doctor. But none of that comes into play until way late in the film, when jealous affections and a few corpses pop up. Until then, the only "thrill" is watching some bitchy bikini-clad debutantes get felt up by the bust-hugging camera work. For a murderous romp through the sex games of the rich and depraved, The In Crowd is about as "in" as white shoes after Labor Day.

-- Tom Meek