A Guide to The Brotherhood Series

Introduction: A DeCoteau Primer

I have been convinced for some time that David DeCoteau's films are only as good as their screenplays. There are some directors who can take a weak, thinly-plotted, or uninteresting script and transform it into a very good film. These directors are artists. There are other directors who are merely competent and can ascend no farther than the quality of the text. They don't add or subtract much of anything. I am tempted to reduce DeCoteau to the latter category--were he not so puzzling to me! He's one of the most prolific directors in the world, very independent, has recognizable obsessions (particularly muscular young men in white underwear), and yet defies any efforts to consider him an auteur.

Let's look at what DeCoteau does bring to his films. He brings his oscellating dutch tilts, what we might call 'canoe cam' (he does have Canadian citizenship), or perhaps we could refer to the technique as 'flying dutchman.' Whatever it is, the technique has been in DeCoteau's repertoir for a long time and is used in nearly every film from the late '90s onward, most obsessively and memorably in Totem (1999). What DeCoteau is notorious for, however, is his insistance on featuring young men in white underwear. Several films blatantly display the young men frolicking in their underwear, rubbing themselves, indulging in gratuitous shower scenes in which they soaplessly rub their chests and abs for inordinately long periods of time. If this visual style varied with each film, were honed for interesting effect, we could call it an auteurist style. After all, DePalma's uses his split-screen technique as obsessively as DeCoteau's uses his canoe-cam. However, DePalma's split-screens always tell us more than what we're seeing; DeCoteau's canoe-cam just makes things wobbly and, yes, a little otherwordly. Nothing else.

A more subtle and, to my knowledge never critically-discussed feature of DeCoteau's work is an obsession with blandness. What seems like sheer narrative carelessness is so consistent in DeCoteau's work, regardless of the screenwriter, that it has to be a wilful trait of DeCoteau's. Every character in a DeCoteau film is cardboard, or worse, a silhouette of a cardboard cut-out. There's little distinction in depth amongst the characters; the distinction is rather one of affability. Perhaps this is why DeCoteau so consistently leaves us spend half the narrative with a set of characters, as though they were the protagonists, only to kill them whenever the monster or slasher shows up. His choices of 'protagonists' are often so counter-intuitive that he is either one of the most inept storytellers in cinematic history or he genuinely sees no important distinction between one character or another. The characters that stand out, are most interesting (which isn't saying much) and affable, are dispatched unceremoniously, while the blandest and least-developed of the characters, characters who get very little narrative time or are fairly unpleasant, very often survive to the end.

Ordinarily a filmmaker so committed to surface innocuousness is, as Robin Wood was arguing back in the '70s, on a subtler level subverting conventional norms. Look as one might into DeCoteau, however, and convention is rarely if ever subverted. DeCoteau's ideas of conventions may well have come from Revenge of the Nerds. There are jocks, nerds, preps and outsiders, and they all exist in their separate but colliding universes. Never in a DeCoteau film does anyone rise above his or her stereotype. That would require characterization. The weird, creepy outsider always does turn out to be weird, creepy and maybe even evil, as in Ancient Evil (1999). Turns out those jocks and cheerleaders were right! Of course they were; they're heroes. And the supercilious preps? Soul-stealing vampires, of course; just as we thought. Rarely has any filmmaker been so committed to, not merely using stereotypes, but upholding stereotypes and following the notion of their correctness to the bitter end. His narratives allow no opportunity for their subversion; the end for each character can be read clearly in the beginning of his films.

Perhaps, one might argue, that this is all a part of DeCoteau's worldview. He simply sees the world as a collection of boring stereotypes, the few moments of excitement provided by hunky men in white underwear or a friendly airhead. A pessimist, he thinks interesting, nice people are destined to die, and those with whom we form a bond will soon be snatched from us. Or perhaps, as I think is more likely, he rarely gets a good screenplay and when he does is more interested in a cheap production with a decent payout than making an entertaining film that'll earn a good payout. So he throws some pecs-and-bulge into a makeshift plot. Of course, were this an aspect of his style, it wouldn't be so bad: perhaps his auteurism is to be found in visual innovation, I'd ordinarily say. But, as argued above, he doesn't bring much visual style to his films either. What we're left with is a director with a few unvarying idiosyncrasies adapting whatever scripts with little contribution in terms of quality.

The Brotherhood series exemplifies this fact quite well. The series is bound together by a loose theme, namely the desire to be a part of something greater than oneself. Each film concerns the tensions amongst young men to join groups and yet remain individuals in some fashion, and each film begins on a new permutation of this notion. Each film, too, features some courtship by an individual or group to induct others into a group. Despite relatively similar IMDb ratings in the 2.5-3.5 range, the quality of each film in the series varies widely. (The generally low ratings can be attributed to the homoeroticism of DeCoteau's films. More on that later.) The fourth entry stands far above the rest of the series and the third entry is egregiously bad. Yet both are written by the same people--the puzzlement of DeCoteau's films continues. Did he have an off day or did the writers? As many DeCoteau films as I've seen, around two-dozen, I still find the man inscrutable. At any rate, I offer here brief, relatively shallow reviews of each Brotherhood film.

The Brotherhood (2001) - 3/4

The first, and one of the strongest, entries in the series, The Brotherhood concerns two very likable young college roommates, one a jock who actually isn't much of a joiner and the other a stereotype nerd who envies those who have the opportunity to be joiners. The jock attracts the attention of the leader of a frat, who decides he wants the jock's body. That is to say, he wants to steal the jock's soul and inhabit the body himself. As the jock is inducted deeper and deeper into the sinister frat, losing his affable personality in the process, his nerdy friend teams up with a sexy co-ed to rescue him.

What made this start to The Brotherhood series so strong is its reliance upon character-based drama rather than typical horror tropes. Though it does come down to bloodshed, the tensions are mostly worked out in dialogue and emotion. The characters could hardly be called deep, though they're more developed than DeCoteau's usual set of characters, developed to the point that their actions are consistent and we see a development in their psychologies. What is absent in depth is supplied in likability, as both of the protagonists are very likable and attractive.

The characters are explicit about the categories of 'jock' and 'nerd', but the 'jock' begins more interested in studying than partying. He takes to his nerd friend, who is curiously enough the leading exponent of the categories, and they form a loose fraternal relationship together. The intrusion of an attractive woman and the need to belong are ultimately dissatisfying alternatives to the brotherly bond of male friendship and the need to be one's own person.

The Brotherhood 2: Young Warlocks (2001) - 2.5/4

The themes of the first Brotherhood film are reworked, making the group not an exclusive set of privileged students, but rather a band of outsiders disliked by (most) other students and principal alike. Enter a new 'kid' with a proposal that amounts to a warlock pyramid scheme: he's been inducted by one warlock and received power; now he will induct them and give them power and he in turn gets even more power--if only they kill off a few people they hate. Unfortunately one of the outsiders, a cute twink with a crush on a jock's girl, has a conscience and faces the warlock's wrath.

Young Warlocks continues The Brotherhood's approach to horror by focusing on supernatural character drama that results logically enough in murders than in beginning with any fixed horror tropes. The 'jocks' are personality-less bullies who stalk the schoolgrounds looking for outsiders to bully. The young hero has tensions with fitting in on the one hand, and is becoming alienated from his friends for his reticence to join the warlock on the other. The drama isn't quite as good as in the first film, however, as the characters aren't as likable nor are their personalities nearly as developed.

As far as the 'goods' go, the young men aren't quite as attractive in this film as they are in the first. One of the jocks (Greg Lyczkowski) and the protagonist (Sean Farris) stand out, but we're usually left looking at the teutonic Forrest Cochran, a Cherub-faced Aryan who looks a good ten years older than everyone else in the highschool. Incidentally, that the film is set in a highschool makes enjoying the beefcake perhaps a little less comfortable than the college setting of the first film.

The Brotherhood III: Young Demons (2003) - 1/4

Easily the worst entry in the series, Young Demons abandons the Brotherhood formula (until now) of dealing with drama and instead goes the route of a cheap, poorly-paced supernatural slasher. A highschool student gets to use the school afterhours on weekends, where he prepares a roleplaying game, complete with LARPing, that anyone is welcome to participate in. This time, however, a man in a knight costume is actually killing the players. Fortunately a jock decides to play with the nerds this time, 'cause he wants in the level 6 elf mage's fire-resistant loincloth. So he can rescue the nerds, or at least a hot female nerd.

The action consists of the characters wandering the school while the knight randomly appears in a cloud of smoke and dispatches one student after another. These students have the thinnest of characterizations, ranging from 'friendly jock' to 'friendly nerd', or even to 'evil nerd.' They're present to be murdered and to wander around in underwear. So we don't care that the knight is dispatching them. All that's left to care about is that they're amusing or nice to look at, but they're not really either. Not even the LARPing, which one would think easy to ridicule, provides much amusement, as the mage has cast a Tolerance spell on the audience. Yes, some male students use the opportunity of falling in blood, for instance, to take a shower, rubbing their pecs and abs soaplessly for several minutes. Then they're murdered. Were the random, scarcely-diagetic beefcake particularly attractive, this might make the film enjoyable for studwatchers. However, they're not quite as aesthetically pleasing as they ought to be.

Where the other Brotherhood films provided drama and in that drama enough space from action and plot for beefcake setpieces and interesting moments, Young Demons is just devoid of that space. It forces a few such moments that are unsuccessful for reasons of unattractiveness and inappropriateness, but the Friday the 13th action is the dominant force in the film and that force is spectacularly uninteresting.

The Brotherhood IV: The Complex (2005) - 3.5/4

Somehow, following The Brotherhood III, DeCoteau and the same writers pull the series out of the muck with the best, most ambitious entry in the series. Leaving the usual settings DeCoteau inhabits--so he can re-use the locations, el cheapo--The Complex is set at a prestigious, private military college. The locations and props used for the film are attractive, complex, and interesting in their own right. Even more amazingly, they're inhabited by interesting characters and feature in a decent, well-paced story.

The plot concerns a child prodigy who, having reached college age, lands himself in the prestigious college just to please his naval officer dad. Unfortunately for him, as the Standard DeCoteau Opening--in which an attractive young man is pursued by a group of attractive men and killed in what amounts to a symbolic homosexual gangrape--reveals, there is something sinister afoot at the college. A secret society known as The Black Skulls have the whole complex in a grip of terror and are interested in inducting the young genius into their fold.

The 'child prodigy' could well have been an annoying character, but Sebastian Gacki has quite a lot of charm and succeeds in pulling the role off very well. The character is likable, intelligent, and does the job of protag-ing very well. The villains have a sufficiently interesting backstory to keep Gacki's character probing and the audience guessing until the end. However, it's the film's setting that elevates it and out of which its other virtues mostly arise, divided between a creepy, underground bunker and the sumptuous, mahogany-panelled main building of the college. A military strategy room and a nice bomb prop add to the film's more elaborate design. If DeCoteau splurged more often, The Brotherhood series may be better in general.

Of course, DeCoteau doesn't splurge because he aims for a common denominator, the target audience that will watch his films for the eyecandy. The Complex offers several moderately attractive young men in their underwear, naturally. It also offers a very sexy lady in hers, namely April Telek (the stripper from the "Pilot" episode of Millennium). While the eyecandy is good, one wishes DeCoteau would be this ambitious more often: eyecandy is always best enjoyed embedded in a good film, and The Complex is a good film.

The series's idea of joining and belonging receives its most complex treatment in this entry as well. Gacki's character has joined a naval academy, but is largely uninterested in joining the navy, let alone a secret society. Not only is he at odds with the secret society, but he's also at odds with a group of bullies that are themselves at odds with the secret society. Ultimately he has no real friends, no circle in which to belong; the film ends with Gacki embarking on a solitary quest to track down all the Black Skulls. Not only does he refuse their courtship and evade the symbolic rape (murder) that would follow his refusal, but he becomes the pursuer and they the victims. He's found his purpose as a decided anti-joiner, and individual of self-reliance to the end.

The Brotherhood V: Alumni (2009) - 2/4

With the title 'Alumni', I expected this episode to be a continuation of The Brotherhood IV. No such luck, however. In fact, Alumni scarcely even fits the theme of The Brotherhood, as it really has nothing to do with joining or fraternity; it simply happens to contain a group of youths, some of whom are male. Their being together is not a voluntary group. In fact, Alumni is a riff on the old I Know What You Did Last Summer plot. A group of high school seniors play a prank after the prom, leaving the prank's victim dead. Years later the whole group are summoned, not having seen each other in a long time, back to the school by mysterious notes. Soon their dark secrets bubble up while they're systematically killed.

We know how such a plot ends long before it does: one of the supposed victims must actually be related to the original victim and is getting revenge. The most interesting aspect of the film is that all of the characters had a perverse relationship of one sort or another with the victim; not necessarily sexual, just that they all hated him for one strange reason or another. Several seemingly inconsistent flashbacks of the murder and its aftermath punctuate the action, like a homoerotic b-movie Rashomon. But even this isn't terribly interesting, as we have no reason to care about these people or who's killing them. The only character worthy of any interest is Amy, a "large-boned" girl whose relative lack of dialogue gives her a mystical sort of otherworldliness, like she stands aloof from these characters and wishes she were in a film directed by Wes Craven instead.

If a DeCoteau film, as a rule, asks the audience to find pleasures outside of the plot, Alumni is a major failure. The setting is another uninteresting school (colleges and high schools abound in DeCoteau's filmography), whose architecture is only moderately distinctive. The eyecandy is decent, primarily on the homoerotic side. DeCoteau goes a little further in this film by providing a gay make-out scene between two attractive, buff guys.

The Brotherhood VI: Initiation (2009) - 2.5/4

The Brotherhood series returns to its roots in this entry, the last as of writing, to delve deeper into fraternity life. In this case, nearly every character, including the protagonist, are already in or trying to join a fraternity. So the tension isn't so much between joining or being an individual, but in maintaining one's individuality and dignity within a group. Because Initiation is all about an elaborate hazing ritual in which the initiates are subjected to two days of torment at a wilderness camp.

The main character is the son of the fraternity's founder. He loathes participating in the initiation, has no desire to be in a fraternity, but wants all the benefits a fraternity conveys. He doesn't seem like much of a party animal and he already has a girlfriend, so it's unclear what those benefits are supposed to be. Still, that's his thin motivation and he's sticking to it. While he arouses the ire of the frat leaders by mouthing off, they fret over a past initiate who disappeared after particularly cruel treatment. Then the killings start.

There's something exceptionally cheap-feeling about this entry, as though DeCoteau's budget were what he could find at the bottom of his cardigan pocket. Each time the killer readies to kill, moves, scratches an itch, or snaps a twig DeCoteau launches into a montage of the killer's eyes and hands--the same shots, over and over again. The setting, moreover, is pretty much an old shack in the woods and trees.

So what's DeCoteau to do? Amp up the eyecandy, of course! If Alumni suffered from too much plot and not enough extra-narrative material, Initiation corrects the wrong big time. The plot is as minimal as can be--a crazy guy in the woods is killing everyone--and the boys-in-tighty-whities motif is cranked up to 11. In this movie, DeCoteau doesn't just find a few choice setpieces for the boys--I wouldn't quite call them 'young men' this time--to rub their pecs and abs for a few minutes; no, he strips them in the first 15 minutes and never lets them put their clothes back on again for the whole movie. For nearly an hour these teenage boys run around the film set, by which I mean the woods DeCoteau rented for $10 a day, wearing nothing but their underwear and tennis shoes. They run in underwear, get hosed in underwear, flee in panic in underwear, get murdered in underwear, and sometimes even do some murdering themselves--in underwear. The idea is brilliant, but the execution really demanded studly men and not scrawny teenage boys.

Coda

So what do we learn from watching all The Brotherhood movies? There are some consistencies that seem to be a part of DeCoteau's worldview. DeCoteau never shows a positive side to joining. Being a part of a school, college, or fraternity is always innately dangerous. Joining subgroups within a school or college is even worse. Groups hunt, pursue their members, in elaborate courtship rituals. The frat leader of The Brotherhood, despite resistance from the jock, persists in the hunt, even overruling objections from his frat brothers. Victor Thanos in The Complex, similarly, will not take the rebuffs of Gacki's character and is willing to be insulted and humiliated while spinning his web to catch him. As Gacki makes a clear move of refusal, the only option left open is, instead of courtship, rape. Should one willingly submitting to the courter's partnership, it will culminate in a sort of death, becoming undead and without a will of one's own. Even the personality of the willing joiner alters. Should one refuse the courtship, the victim will be cornered by the group and killed, brought to death unwillingly. The willing partnership is the surrogate for sex in The Brotherhood series, and in all of DeCoteau's homoerotic films, because murder is clearly a surrogate of rape. So in DeCoteau, eros is really transmuted to thanatos; erotic love is conceivable only in death, entered willingly or forcefully. To join a group is always to be penetrated (in The Brotherhood, joining the group involves a pin-prick), to have one's individuality invaded, and with that to die.

Overall, the Brotherhood series has been devalued not just for its low budget but also for catering to a viewing audience that we still can't imagine as an ideal audience. I don't mean we can't imagine such an audience because we're homophobes, but because maybe there really is no ideal audience for DeCoteau's films. One wonders if treating men as eyecandy can ever have the same effect on women or gay men that treating women as eyecandy has on men. If certain feminist analyses are correct, the very notion of 'eyecandy' is patriarchal, and not a form of pleasure shared by women or gay men. On the other hand, I myself enjoy the aesthetic value of beautiful male bodies. But do I enjoy it in the same campy way we enjoy seeing Linnea Quigley do the Virgin Dance of the Double Chainsaws in Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers or the her naked tomb dance in Return of the Living Dead? We're invited, in these b-movies, to be salacious and to be slightly amused at ourselves for being so. I'm not sure where DeCoteau's tongue is, but it certainly isn't in his cheek when he has his boys prance around in underwear--except, perhaps, in Initiation. On the other hand, DeCoteau is too timid, or too cheap, to show us full-frontal male nudity, which makes what he is showing too tame for interested parties and too wild, or should I say too gay, for uninterested parties.

So DeCoteau has found an interesting niche in which he continues to labour, a niche he really began carving out with his early '80s feature Dreamaniac. But it's a niche that is consistently rated low partially by its own target audience and partially by an alternate audience looking for a laugh. It's a shame, because The Brotherhood and The Complex are both enjoyable and well-made low-budget horror movies. They have no ambition to be great indie films; they merely entertain as a cheesy '80s horror flick, like Slumber Party Massacre, might do. Were it not for the perceived homoeroticism of the films, they would certainly be rated higher. As it stands, they are viewed to be laughed at, camp against their will.

However, as evidence by The Brotherhood series, DeCoteau's concern for making the films good and fun for whomever he imagines his audience to be seems lacking. The films' quality diverges widely. Why is The Complex quite good while Alumni and Young Demons are quite awful? Did DeCoteau just happen to have a few extra bucks to spare? Did his screenwriters just luck out and write him a decent story? I don't know. But I want to make a challenge. Mr. DeCoteau, should you be reading this, I put it to you that with the budget and deadline you have for your films, I could make a more financially and critically successful, audience-pleasing film. And with half the budget and a longer shooting schedule, I'm confident I could do the same. You put up the budget, I'll give you a movie. What would that prove? Only that you, Mr. DeCoteau, could do better if only you cared more.