- Title: The In Crowd (2000)
- IMDb: link
Throwback Tuesday takes us back to the year 2000. The 90s and early 2000s saw a glut of erotic thrillers including Wild Things, Poison Ivy, and Embrace of the Vampire. Susan Ward starred in a handful of these: Poison Ivy: The New Seduction, Wild Things 2, and The In Crowd (which did get a theatrical release after a bit of trimming got its R-rating slashed down to PG-13). Although none of these would be classified as good movies, it’s the last of these for which I remember the actress far more than her later roles Sunset Beach or Make It or Break It. And she’s really the only reason to check back in with the film 25 years later.
Ward stars as spoiled rich kid Brittany Foster who acts as the film’s femme fatale. However, she’s not our protagonist. Lori Heuring stars as Adrien, a recently-released mental patient, who has gotten a job at the exclusive country club for the summer thanks to her doctor and family friend (Daniel Hugh Kelly) pulling a few favors.
Adrien’s resemblance to Brittany’s missing older sister causes a commotion among the “in crowd” and leads to Brittany befriending her for her own selfish reasons. Some are welcoming of Adrien while others are jealous of of Brittany’s interest in her. However, once Brittany sees Adrien as a threat, she takes steps to remedy the situation through her bag of tricks which includes lying, seduction, gaslighting, framing, and murder.
The story, all tied to Adrien’s resemblance to a character that apparently is so obvious yet only remarked on by a handful of people is, of course, laughable. And The In Crowd does have multiple examples of unintentional humor sprinkled throughout the film leading to some fitting it in the “so bad it’s good” category. I won’t go that far, but there’s enough moments here and there that it does make you wonder with a reworked script centered around Brittany rather than Adrien, some recasting, and a different director, whether or not anything more would have come of the project. Or perhaps this throwaway thriller was never meant to be anything more.
Eventually the film pits the two girls against each other while teasing that although Brittany is beaten she’s not necessarily defeated. What works is Ward’s highly-sexual performance as Brittany (clips of which you can find all over the Internet). With films like this, she certainly seemed to have been carving out a niche for herself before her move to soap opera and bit roles in television and mainstream movies which never cashed in on the promise that we find in, the admittedly otherwise awful, The In Crowd.
Watch the trailer
