The Wrong Friend

The Wrong Friend

The Wrong-A-Thon continues on with The Wrong Friend, which again is little misleading as a title because at no point in this movie was this dude trying to be anybody's friend.  A more apt title would probably be The Wrong Guy that Roofied Me, not that there's a right guy to be roofied by, but if there is, it's definitely not this guy.  Before we get started, please note that this movie deals with the very uncomfortable subject of rape, and it doesn't deal with it very well.  This is a strange thing to say, but where one can have some campy fun with murder, a scenario hasn't been invented yet where rape and sexual assault is anything but wicked serious.  We'll get into it.

Our film opens with a couple of kids in a bedroom engaging in what looks to be a little hanky-panky, until she says stop and he refuses to acknowledge that request.  Next thing we know this girl is a broken down mess in the hospital, covered in bruises, when the nurse summons the authorities because something really bad has just happened to this kid.

Fast forward a bit to the office of Principle Atkins as played by Vivica A. Fox, who insists on giving herself top billing in these things even though she has just three short scenes in this movie at most.  Principal Atkins is welcoming new student Chris (Jared Scott) into her public school, along with a generous endowment from his wealthy parents.  The fact that is a public school will turn out to be super relevant.  It's not long before we see Chris lurking on the school grounds hiding behind trees, which has to be a strange sight for the throng of other students walking by, spying on today's grown-ass-woman playing a high school student, Riley (Li Eubanks), before popping out and making his acquaintance. 

Name?  Business.... Risky Business.

Note that this is probably the first one of these movies that we've seen where our grown-ass-woman playing a high school student doesn't run track or something, even though Li Eubanks certainly looks like someone who's built for speed.  Chris let's Riley and her bestie Kim (Sophia Katarina) know that he's the new kid and just wants to break the ice by throwing a big shindig, while all the while giving Riley the sexy eyes.  When he finally takes off those ridiculous sunglasses.  Kim informs Riley that she does have a boyfriend, but Riley doesn't give a damn about that dude right about now.  

This Truancy party sponsored by Solo Cups.

Chris's party at his absent parents mansion is truly off the chain, considering they are having this party in broad daylight on what I believe is a Tuesday.  Then Riley has a big fight with this boyfriend of hers which plays right into Chris's hands who moves in and pulls out the big guns.  Those guns being his abs.

He bumped into that column three times.  Because he can't see it.

Chris pours Riley a spiked drink which immediately starts to work, Kim being The Right Friend tries to convince her bestie to come home with her but Riley, who is kind of a terrible person, refuses, which leads to her blacking out completely in Chris's bedroom.

There is nothing that can be said here that is cute, witty or funny.

Riley wakes up the next morning in her own bed with no knowledge how she got there.  And to be honest, she's not too terribly concerned about this.  Her mom is concerned, Kim is concerned but Riley not so much.  In fact, it's time to dress down in her underwear and catch some rays.  While being peeped on by the guy who I think just raped her?  Who is still holding on to that Risky Business look, despite the fact the movie had to have come out decades before he was even born

Unfortunately for Riley, whatever happened with Chris at the party is starting to get real, and fast.  Somebody sent the boyfriend she's been beefing with pictures of their little event, none of which she remembers, then somebody starts forwarding Riley pictures of their 'fun time' as Chris would call it.

Gotta admit, the tantric bicep licking technique is new to me.

Now Riley is hit with the tragic realization that she's been drugged and raped and confronts Chris about this, but he claims no such thing happened, outside of consent, and he's not the one sending the pictures.  He's lying about all of this by the way.   Even the boyfriend that Riley has been treating like ass has come around to liking her again, and he doesn't like people who drug and rape his girl.  He, with Riley by his side, confront Chris, which gets them both nothing but a face full of rich boy privilege.  This too plays into Chris's hands who now makes his next move.

This so-called 'Knuckle Sandwich' isn't nearly as tasty as they say.

Yes, that move would be punching himself in the face.  Repeatedly.   He blamed the boyfriend for this.  He even had them all bought into the police station for assault charges, where he showed everybody a video of his and Riley's 'tryst'.    Now for full disclosure, the only thing I know about police work is what I see on TV... which makes me an expert... but if you drug somebody, and then tape yourself having sex with this person who is pretty much unconscious, shouldn't the police, who he showed the video to, be slightly concerned that this girl might be telling the truth?   Well not these cops.  At this point though, we're curious about what's Chris's deal.  What's his plan?  I mean he could stalk and rape anybody in this high school, but he's only stalking and terrorizing Riley.  Why?  All will be answered in true Wrong fashion my friends.

Speaking of plans, Riley, the boyfriend and the bestie figure they need a plan to bring this guy down and they come up with one.  This plan, as far as I can can decipher it, is for Riley and her bestie Kim to pretend to get into fight, Kim then befriends Chris, and then she somehow... I don't know.  Never really figured it out.  

Me? I use Max Factor Maxalicious Gloss.  Thank you for asking.

This plan of course fails miserably leading to make one unstable dude even unstabler, who then attacks Kim the next night dressed as a masked burglar.  Fortunately a concerned citizen was passing by and stopped him before he could do any real damage, but Kim did end up in the hospital with some bumps and bruises, and one angry best friend.  

That's Riley getting deep into the ass of Principal Atkins, who was at the hospital checking on one of her assaulted students for some reason, which is something I don't think public school principles do, with Riley letting her have it for letting rapists into the school.  Riley wants the principle to go in the hospital room and and take a good look at Kim!  Actually Riley, Kim wasn't the one who was drugged and raped, that was you.  She needs to take a good look at you if she's gonna take a look at anybody.  

Well Chris has had enough of these shenanigans.  Don't know why because he hasn't been implicated in anything and it looks like everything is going his way, but the movie has to end now.  So Chris breaks into Riley's house and holds her mom at knife point.  He also tells Riley and her mom that 'People like you will never get the best of people like me!'  I don't know if that was racist or elitist.  Or both.  Or maybe there's no difference.

Here he does the whole talking killer bit, telling us why he's doing what he's doing.  Turns out, after he raped that girl in the beginning of the movie, Riley's mom was the attending nurse, and if she had just minded her own damn business, as opposed to doing her job and reporting the raped girl's bruises and such, Chris wouldn't have been kicked out of private school and forced to go to public school.  So he's decided to torture the mother, by torturing the daughter, because he blames the mother for forcing him to go to public school.  Damn.  Public school ain't that damn bad.  I mean two out of the last three presidents when to public school.  I'll let you guess which one went to a private school.  Not that I'm saying anything about anything.  (Actually, that's not true.  The last four presidents all went to private high schools, with Bill Clinton having gone to a public Magnet School, which is just a low-key private school.  Thus Chris probably has a right to be pissed off.  Point taken Chris.)

Regardless, Riley runs off and gets her gun.  Yes, Riley has a gun.  In her nightstand.  We saw a shot of it earlier in the movie.  I was curious why an eighteen year old high school girl had a gun in her nightstand, not wanting to infringe on her 2nd amendment rights or anything, but I was hoping for an explanation.  Just a single line.  Anything.  I got nothing.  Anyway, Mom gets away from Chris by stabbing him in the leg with a scalpel she had in her pocket, because all nurses walks around with random surgical instruments in their pockets for some reason, and then Riley blows his ass away.  With her gun.  That she keeps in her nightstand.  For some reason.

And thus ends the life of Chris, The Wrong Friend, and the kid who really didn't like going to public school.  I mean seriously.  He didn't like that.

So as far as a 'Wrong' movie goes, this one pretty much hits most of the Wrong notes just about right, with cockamamie plans gone awry hatched by seriously unstable people, complete with lots of nonsensical story lines and plot points that have no interest in connecting to each other... we like that stuff.  That's why we watch these movies.  But this one is tricky because this movie chose to deal with the subject of rape as opposed to just crazy people murder, and if that's the subject that we're going to tackle, then a little more thought and care probably needs to go into it than went into this.  

As a director, David DeCouteau has been over sexualizing his actors, particularly his male ones, probably as long as he's been making movies.  He probably doesn't even know how NOT to do it at this point, but here, with this subject matter, it might've been prudent to tone down the hyper sexuality overtones of the actors pretending to be high school students in a movie about rape.  Just a little bit.  It works in Porky's movies and Fast Times, but not so much in sexual assault movies.  Then there was the fact that nobody even believed that Riley was actually raped, even her mother, but it wasn't treated like 'See how the system discriminates against the victims!', more so it was treated like 'have you met Riley?'  Even the character of Riley seemed more concerned that somebody was sending pictures of her on IG, against her consent, far more than this dude had sex with her against her consent.  The whole tone was just off and uncomfortable.  

Then there was a point in the middle of the movie it actually gets serious.  Really serious.  Riley goes to speak to the girl who was raped in the beginning, only to find her mother, played by Tracy Nelson, and learns that she eventually committed suicide due the trauma of the incident.  And Tracy Nelson delivers a heartbreaking scene describing what her daughter went through and the overwhelming grief of her loss, a scene which just felt like it belonged in a better, more focused movie about this issue.  

Worst still is I had to put in too much thought into watching a 'Wrong' movie.  Forcing me to use terms like 'tonal imbalance'.  I don't want to do that and a Wrong movie doesn't want me to do that.  I just want to watch crazy people kill other people for really stupid reasons.  I think we all know that sexual assault is a serious subject which should not be taken lightly, and in defense of 'The Wrong Friend' it doesn't take lightly, it just does it poorly.    Still, it was Wrong enough for Three Wrongs.

Finally, one thing that might've just saved this movie and made it perfect would've been if Principle Vivica, the person who admitted the crazed rapist to her school, materialized after Chris got murked and said the catch phrase 'Uh... looks like you picked the Wrong Friend', and then disappear.  That, folks, would have been magical.  Oh well.