directed by david nutter . written by scott rosenberg . running time : 83 minutes . rated r ( for strong violence , sexuality , language , and drug content ) . disturbing behavior is the newest teen horror film that desperately tries to milk a little more money from the crowd that liked scream and i know what you did last summer . disturbing behavior doesn't hold a candle to any of these films which in comparison deserve to be studied thoroughly by film historians and placed on the afi list . the plot of disturbing behavior is so disgusting it's almost unbearable to write it in the review . steve clark ( james marsden ) and his family move from chicago to get away from the personal demons of an older son who had committed suicide which we see in quick flashbacks . these quick flashbacks have absolutely no point and are only inserted to add gasoline to the fire that will be created later in steve's mind . the family moves to a little fishing town called cradle bay which is very reminiscent of the little fishing town the characters where terrorized in i know what you did last summer . of course we must go through the 'i'm new here' scenes where steve feels out of place . first day of school rolls along and steve is introduced to the gothic , stoned teenagers gavin strick ( nick stahl ) and rachel wagner ( katie holmes of wb's " dawson creek " ) who he becomes friends with . gavin has a theory that something's up with the popular kids at cradle bay high . they call themselves the blue ribbons . they are the jocks and cheerleaders who have bake sales and blood drives annually . gavin witnesses a murder in an earlier scene and this starts his mind running . he believes that teachers and parents are mindwashing bad students to make everyone perfect . none of his goth friends believe his story and claim he was just " high " . could these parents be purifying the world ? who will be there next victim ? you can only guess . you won't need to think hard . well the next 40 minutes is devoted to chases and body counts . each scene is shot very dark with gloomy images and whispers everywhere . blue ribbon members mutilate people in large populated areas and are not noticed whatsoever . is this movie an entire lost cause . almost . there is one character i liked quite a bit . william sadler does a good job as the school's janitor who is looked on as the village idiot . could he be more ? probably . he seems to be having a good time and plays his part very excited . this horror film breaks a lot of the horror film rules that were defined by the modern day classics like " halloween " and " scream " . they think that just showing a person being murdered is scary . what the above films do well is play with your mind . they don't believe the gorier the better . " hey ! producers ! leave us critics alone ! " 
