The brotherhood: le pacte

David DeCoteau's film "The brotherhood" has brought the word 'bad' to new levels of badness. Bad acting. Bad effects. Bad everything. This bad film just oozed rottenness from every bad scene... simply bad beyond all infinite dimensions of possible badness.

Well maybe not that bad, but lord, it wasn't good.

Blond super-hunk Sam Page (or "Nathan Watkins"/ as Chris Chandler) goes to Drake college, on a swimming scholarship. Stripping down to his gym shorts for a run, Mr. Page catches the eye of blonder super-hunk Bradley Stryker (as Devon Eisley). Mr. Stryker is the leader of Drake's weirdest fraternity; and, he travels around with good-looking men in sunglasses. Stryker decides he wants Page's perfect body. Page tells super-geek (but cute) roommate Josh Hammond (as Dan Myers) he isn't interested in joining a fraternity. Then, Page admires Stryker's big fraternity pin, and gets sucked in…

Director David DeCoteau is definitely going after something. Page and Stryker make an interesting couple, especially when they play a "three way" love scene; note, the female ("Sandy") is incidental. "The Brotherhood" may have worked better if Mr. DeCoteau had either gone all out, or made the "gay subtext" more subtle. The subtle route is often taken by other filmmakers. The "vampire" storyline is more than a little hard to swallow (if the guys in question are supposed to be vampires).

*** The Brotherhood (2/01) David DeCoteau ~ Sam Page, Bradley Stryker, Josh Hammond, Elizabeth Bruderman

No, this is not Male Model University, but judging by the student body you need to look like one to attend. It's apparent you need a muscular physique, perfectly gelled hair and tight leather duds just to take a stroll around campus. At parties, name drop Nietzsche and make sure you wear a fine suit and tie so you have something nice to puke all over. Never button up your top three buttons, hang out in juvenile high schoolish cliques and always wear shades. No, this thing isn't set on Mars, but close enough: it's set in the minds of horny skeezers David DeCoteau and scripter Matthew Jason Walsh, so any resemblance between this and any real college campus is strictly coincidental.

Oh yeah, the so-called plot... Hunky freshman stud-ent Christopher Chandler (Nathan Watkins) is anti-frat, but still wooed by the most popular house on campus. I mean, aren't Devon, Barry, Jordan and Mikhael the type of dudes everyone wants to hang with? No, not really. They're conceited, shallow, boring, and stupid, they throw lame parties and they drink blood to stay young and desirable. Go figure.

DeCoteau began his career exploiting the bods of B-babes like Linnea Quigley and Brinke Stevens and now he's switched to men's bodies, which is completely fair in our more enlightened age. Men deserve to be treated like meat, too, but it's too bad these talent-dry bonehead boy toys ACT like meat. You'd be hard pressed to find more lifeless, listless performances (particularly Bradley Stryker as the main bad guy) but hell, they DO look great in their matching boxer briefs. Save yourself the time and skim through a Calvin Klein catalogue instead. And this thing merits a pair of sequels?!

Wow, this movie is even gayer than "HellBent"! What are the odds of that ever happening? I don't think David DeCoteau ever had the intention of making a horror movie… He clearly just wanted to surround himself with athletic & handsome twenty-something boys, so he quickly thought up a scenario about a college fraternity of vampires. Instead of action & suspense, we get an whole army of male students parading in their matching tight white boxer shorts and instead of gory massacres we get insecure boys openly talking about their feelings and emotions…for hours! Two young losers meet each other on the first day of college. Chris has the body of a regular jock, but he's the sensitive type, so he doesn't want people to judge him based on his appearance. The other one, Dan, never stops nagging about how unpopular he was in his previous school. They befriend a girl with an incredibly beautiful rack; still all they ever talk about is their mutual friendship. In come the boys of the Domo Tau Omega fraternity; pretentious little pricks with sunglasses that rule over the university. Their leader – super gay dude Devon – wants Chris to join his elite group because he fancies him. Poor Chris doesn't know, however, that they form the gayest coven of vampires horror cinema has ever brought forward. "The Brotherhood" is a terrible film. There's not even an attempt to build up tension or atmosphere and DeCoteau didn't even bother to insert some cheesy horror effects. The vampires suck, all right. But not blood… They suck at making themselves appear menacing and evil. The dialogs are abysmal and the production values are overall poor, barely disguising the fact that our director is more interested in shooting porn movies. Or maybe put together catalogs for men's underwear. He should do so, and quit misleading fans of horror films. The cast members may be yummy eye-candy (at least, for certain target groups), but none of them has the slightest bit of acting talent. One to avoid at all costs.

In this feeble horror tale Chris (Samuel Page as Nathan Watkins), a college student, is offered the chance to join an elite Fraternity by Devon (Bradley Stryker). Unknown to Chris this particular Fraternity happens to be the cover for a vampire coven.

‘The Brotherhood' (known in the UK as ‘I've Been Watching You') is one of the worst movies I have ever had the displeasure to watch. With no real storyline, a poor script and dismal acting this movie appears to be nothing more than a softcore gay porn movie disguised as a supposedly stylish horror movie. If the homoeroticism served a purpose to the story then I would not be as unimpressed but there is nothing in here remotely resembling a horror movie. The story comes across as exactly what it is – a tacked on and meaningless narrative with no redeeming features.

The homoeroticism is not what makes this movie dire, that dubious distinction belongs to the appalling story closely followed by the inept acting and the inexcusably bad script. Veteran director, David DeCoteau's direction was the only real highlight of this movie and even that seemed to be of a particularly low standard. While it may be nice for some to watch a bunch of college jocks wandering around with their shirts off, anybody who wants a half-decent story should look elsewhere. This movie is really nothing more than boring tripe! My rating for ‘The Brotherhood' – 2/10.