The Skulls

by Peter Keough

At least three presidents, so claims the prologue to The Skulls, have been members of secret societies like the fictional one of the film's title. Maybe that's why we've had such idiots in the White House. This ludicrous exercise in half-baked paranoia from Rob Cohen should have been called The Numbskulls. Luke McNamara (Joshua Jackson) is an ambitious blue-collar student at an Ivy League school who fears his advanced rowing skills (or maybe the film should be called The Sculls?) won't suffice to get him a law degree. His dream is to gain admittance to the Skulls, an elite, secret fraternity that apparently rules the world and pays for its members' higher education.

After stealing a weathervane, Luke and blue-blood scion Caleb Mandrake (Paul Walker) are admitted, but the classic cars, Rolexes, mumbo-jumbo rituals (think Eyes Wide Shut in the Bat Cave), and white-collar shindigs with brandy and babes come at a price -- one's freedom and morality (they'd realize this if they'd ever bothered to read the rule book they're given, but that's the problem with college kids these days). Before you know it, Luke's nosy roommate is found hanging from a pipe, his snooty girlfriend won't talk to him, and a police detective is giving him the third degree. Cohen tries to tart up this drivel with arty camerawork and editing, but that only underscores the portentous idiocy. At least William Petersen is amusing as a sleazy, Clintonesque senator; otherwise The Skulls is empty-headed piffle.