Wild Things (1998)

Wild Things (1998)

starring Kevin Bacon, Matt Dillom, Neve Campbell, Denise Richards

directed by John McNaughton

108 minutes

Blue Bay High School guidance counselor Sam Lombardo (Matt Dillon) invites two of his students over to his place to wash his car. Kelly Van Ryan (Denise Richards), one of the students, stays behind and tells her friend to leave. Kelly leaves Sam's place later looking disheveled and distressed. She later tells her mother that Sam raped her.

Sam's life starts to get very uncomfortable as word gets around about what he's been accused of doing to Kelly. Sam hires Ken (Bill Murray), a cut rate lawyer. Susie Toller (Neve Campbell), another student from Blue Bay High School, comes forward and reports that Sam raped her a year ago. Sam gets arrested and put on trial.

The trial doesn't exactly go as the prosecution hoped it would. Ken finds a hole in Susie's testimony. During cross examination he gets her to tell the truth. Sam didn't rape her and she conspired with Kelly to frame Sam. 

Ken talks Sam into suing Kelly's mother. She settles for $8.3 million. Sam leaves his job at Blue Bay High School. It becomes clear that Susie isn't the only one with whom Kelly conspired.

Duquette (Kevin Bacon), one of the police officers that investigated the rape charges, figures out what happened. He feels like he's been used and starts pushing the conspirators to question their trust in one another. Susie is the first to crack and more than one person winds up dead before the movie is over.

Thoughts

I originally wrote a more detailed plot summary but ultimately decided to delete most of the plot twists from my summary. 

This movie started out a little slow. I wasn't so sure about it until I got about 40 minutes into it. Once I saw one twist in the story I started to suspect that there would be more but I wasn't sure how or where it would all end. Overall I think this movie is decent but not great. Probably not everyone's cup of tea. I might watch it again but I'm not sure about how it would strike me knowing how it all turns out.