It’s uncommon to observe TV nowadays with out feeling a touch of deja vu, and nowhere is that this extra evident than with teen drama. Not content material with a useless Gossip Woman revival, the YA leisure gods have been making their means by outdated movies for inspiration, from Scream to I Know What You Did Final Summer time. The newest cult 90s basic they’ve determined to “reimagine” is Merciless Intentions, itself primarily based on Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses from 1782.
The unique movie, in fact, starred Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe as too-close-for-comfort step siblings Kathryn and Sebastian, whose lust for each other is outdone solely by their love of troublemaking, as they callously toy with the love lives of ingenues Cecile and Annette (Selma Blair and Reese Witherspoon). Quick ahead to 2024, and the motion strikes from Manhattan to Washington DC, the place protagonists Caroline and Lucien terrorise their friends on the elite Manchester Faculty – interspersed with the odd little bit of almost-incest for outdated occasions’ sake.
Shifting Merciless Intentions from a highschool to school setting means including a staple of American faculty – Greek life, with its clandestine societies and dangerous initiation rituals – and Merciless Intentions 2.0 can’t get sufficient of it. Caroline (Sarah Catherine Hook) is the top of the Delta Phi sorority, which roughly exists to psychologically torture different college students whereas making an attempt to rip-off fresh-faced ingenues (are you able to see the place that is going?) into becoming a member of its completely blow-dried ranks. Fortunately, just like the Sarah earlier than her, when the going will get powerful, Caroline has a semester’s price of cocaine stashed in her rosary.
In the meantime, Lucien (Zac Burgess) is the treasurer of the Alpha Gamma fraternity, the place intercourse, medicine and monetary embezzlement are the order of the day. The way forward for Greek life, we’re instructed, is beneath risk due to a deadly “hazing” incident, which it transpires was somebody getting hit on the top with a can of beer. Fortunately, the sufferer is devoted himbo and political nepo child Scott (Khobe Clarke), who will get the most effective strains in the entire present (amongst them, “I understand how mendacity works – my dad’s in Congress”).
Hook and Burgess aren’t Gellar and Philippe, however they’re compelling leads (Prime additionally seems to have picked two actors who look as if they’ve been genetically modified to resemble two different 90s icons, Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger). Burgess is a delight specifically, managing to retain Lucien’s sense of barely hid mania even whereas delivering hammy double entendres resembling: “there’s nothing higher than a very good bang”, as he inspects a classmate’s new fringe.
Neighbours alumnus John Harlan Kim additionally proves that Ramsay Road stays a ending college for a few of TV’s greatest actors, taking over the position of Janus-faced frat boy Blaise with an exciting mixture of icy detachment and determined insecurity. Additionally working additional time is Savannah Lee Smith, beforehand seen within the Gossip Woman reboot. Her character, Annie, is a reimagining of Witherspoon’s Annette: a brand new Delta recruit who’s swept into Caroline and Lucien’s sexually manipulative video games to the sound of an Olivia Rodrigo megamix.
Had Prime stopped there, this new Merciless Intentions may need had a combating probability. However not like its supply materials, an ideal 97 minutes of thrilling eroticism and 90s anthems (The Verve! Placebo!), it simply doesn’t know the place to finish. As a result of Annie isn’t solely the goal of Lucien’s affections, she’s additionally – dun, dun, dun! – the daughter of the vice-president of america. It’s a twist that certainly even Chat GPT would have vetoed, and but right here we’re. And so, our swaggering, mulleted Lothario Lucien isn’t a lot caught in a sport of cat and mouse along with his stepsister, however with the key service brokers who tail Annie’s each transfer, and who actually carry down the temper at freshers’ week.
Despite my higher judgment, I just like the B-plot involving Caroline’s sorority deputy CeCe (Sara Silva), who openly channels the neurotic power of Selma Blair’s Cecile from the unique (helped, too, by the truth that their love pursuits are performed by the identical actor, Sean Patrick Thomas, who was younger cello instructor Ronald within the movie, and is now the not-so-young Professor Chadwick). However, actually, this seems like a generic teen collection by every other title. You possibly can’t assist however marvel what the writers may need give you had they not been confined by the streaming financial system’s determined want for nostalgia, which even extends to an compulsory cowl of Bitter Candy Symphony. If you need soapy, senseless melodrama to move the time, press play. However if you wish to watch Merciless Intentions, for God’s sake, simply mud off the DVD.
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