Tired of watching their cute kids metamorphose into flesh-piercing, drug-using, satanic-rock-music-worshipping teenagers, the parents of small-town Cradle Bay have embraced creepy school shrink Dr. Caldicott (Bruce Greenwood), whose special brand
of therapeutic magic turns sullen, defiant youngsters into model teenagers who dress nicely, get good grades and aren't on intimate terms with the local police. Enter the Clarks, formerly of Chicago, who've lost their eldest son to suicide and want surviving children Steve (James Marsden) and
Lindsay (Katharine Isabelle) to make a fresh start and some new friends, preferably high achievers like the "Blue Ribbon" graduates of Dr. Caldicott's mysterious program. But there's something not right with those dream teens: They're seriously conflicted about sex and explode like Scud missiles
when crossed. Steve's motor-mouthed new buddy Gavin (Nick Stahl), a classic high-IQ underachiever, thinks Caldicott is into behavioral modification, but he doesn't know the half of it. And when the perfect monsters reach for Gavin, it's up to Steve and fellow outcast Rachel (Katie Holmes, of TV's
Dawson's Creek) to get to the bottom of the town's epidemic of adolescent conformity. Directed by X-Files and Millennium veteran David Nutter, this brain-dead spook show looks great, in that greenish, everything-shot-underwater kind of way. And it's a dynamite sociological
companion piece to THE STEPFORD WIVES: liberated women, rebellious teens... place your bets now on who goes under the knife of social submission next. But Scott Rosenberg's careless script squanders a great premise -- granted, the same great premise that drives the much more entertaining DEAD KIDS
and ZOMBIE HIGH, and that's before we even get to Caldicott's mind-control system, which has equal debts to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and THE PARALLAX VIEW. Fun only for the most undemanding. --Maitland McDonagh
