Outside of the US, most of us know what a frat boy is, and we know hazing as an idea, even though all of it probably comes through the filter of dumb college movies. This the world of this film, and it is set in the aftermath of something happening to one of the members of the fraternity. In the aftermath the main group at the head of the fraternity try to work out the best way to move forward to protect their group, their house, and them as individuals.
As you may have picked up from some of my plot description, the world of college houses etc is not one I am familiar with, outside of the aforementioned dumb movies. This is important to the film because there is a lot of dialogue in here which is driven by references to ruling bodies, characters, etc. The make-up of the group and the reason this closed scene is playing out also relates to the structures to which I am not familiar. This did limit me in terms of getting into the moment with the film – of being made to feel like I was in the room. I did not need the film to explain the world to me, or do a lot to help me understand, but it does do the opposite by throwing up a lot of stuff with no easy way through it.
Despite this the core drama does work, and the tight location helps it. There is an element of it feeling a little amateur in nature, and the sharp edges it tries to have are not always there. It still works as a contained drama which does something more interesting with the setting of a fraternity, but it didn't hook me as well as it should have done – and I wonder how much of that was it being (literally) foreign to me.
