Starring: Thomas Mann, Oliver Cooper
Pitchforks: 3/5
The film opens with a clever title card, expressing thanks to Warner Bros. for compiling all the footage for the film about to be seen. The next paragraph offers apologies to the residents of North Pasadena, where the fictional house party took place.
"Project X," the latest in the found-footage genre, assembles amateur video from a party detailing how it went from bad to worse to completely unmanageable.
The main characters, high school upperclassmen Thomas (Thomas Mann), Costa (Oliver Cooper), J.B. (Jonathan Daniel Brown) and Dax (Dax Flame), spent much of their academic career flying under the radar of popularity.
Each of them fit into neat stereotypes, yet the actors don’t overplay it and possess a few qualities of actual high school students. They, along with the rest of the cast, are first-time actors.
In the film, Thomas’s parents are conveniently away, and Costa decides they should host a big party at the house. He spreads the word about the party through various methods, including Craigslist. Of the cast, Costa’s character is the funniest, with his suave, lecherous act that is often at odds with his sleeveless-sweater look.
The amusing beginning scenes depict the humor of setting up the party. Early party scenes are also comical and spot on, capturing the excitement and anticipation of the recognition the geeks hope to receive from attractive girls. To gain attention, they throw their inhibitions to the wind.
But things predictably get out of control — dwarves enter the picture, non-high school students show up, windows and chandeliers break, ecstasy’s consumed and the party overflows into the street.
As the party descends into chaos, it stops being amusing and gets serious. When neighbors’ cars get torched, people get hurt and the party crowd takes on an ugly, mob-like quality — it ceases to be a (mostly) harmless comedy, and becomes dire. Not even the easy gag of his Thomas’s dad’s Mercedes taking a dip in the pool can alleviate the situation.
This isn’t to say that a movie about a party that descends into madness can’t be funny. It can be. Yet, the movie’s desire to up the ante makes it obvious that the film’s creators did not know where to go with the movie after a certain point, and decided to just throw money at the screen and hope the lunacy would make up the difference.
“Suspicion” just doesn’t live up to the potential of that opening title card.
Reach the reporter at tccoste1@asu.edu
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