Rating: D+
Dir: Bill McAdams Jr.
Star: Jessica Sonneborn, Michael McLafferty, Paulie Rojas, Augie Duke
After three cheerleaders go missing from a local high-school, the cops send Maggie Rawdon (Sonneborn) undercover as transfer student ‘Kate’, to try and find out what happened, and to stop further disappearances. She links up with campus queen bitch Brittany (Duke), and agrees to drive Brittany and her two friends to a rave. However, the directions they’ve been given are bogus, and it turns out they are actually fresh meat for a program which pits teenage girls against each other in fights to the death, both for a live audience and [I’m kinda assuming – it’d be a bit of a waste otherwise] streamed over the Internet.
Though we’re talking strictly a low-rent operation, with the venue for all these Japanese high-rollers, etc. apparently being a barn with the ring ropes being…well, rope. It’s an appropriate metaphor for the movie as a whole, which promises a great deal more than it actually delivers. It’s over an hour in before we get to the first death-match, and to get there, you have to endure a great deal of sub-Heathers bitching between the young ladies. However, it’s still a good deal more entertaining than the entirely personality-free Tommy (McLafferty), who is both Maggie’s ex, and also happens to be a cop on the Narcotics division. Concerned by the disappearance, he tries to track her down, first at the true location of the rave, where he discovers the mis-direction.
Memo to self: if I ever start a Teenage Totty Fight Club Show, do not have the bouts at the same location where I kidnap my participants. Bit of a giveaway, that. It does have an appropriately pessimistic attitude towards high-school and its inhabitants: if accurate, I sincerely hope the end of the world comes in 2012, because there’s no hope for the future. That aside, this largely fails as a horror movie, fails as a social satire, and certainly fails on the level of watching teenage girls in their underwear beat the crap out of each other. Which, of the three, is clearly the most important thing. Consequently, the first rule of Lure: Teen Fight Club is, you do not watch Lure: Teen Fight Club