Wild Things (1998) 90s Hollywood or Hollyoaks Later? (Review)

It’s really strange coming to a piece of pop culture from your youth for the first time almost twenty-five years after its moment in the spotlight, but that’s exactly what I have done with Wild Things, released to Blu-ray by Arrow this week. I’m not entirely sure why this torrid, twisty-turny thriller from (of all people) Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer director John McNaughton had passed me by until now; it certainly wasn’t for the film’s want of trying. In the laddish, Loaded-heavy era of the late 90s, Wild Things was everywhere. It’s drenched swimming pool sirens Denise Richards and Neve Campbell stared enticingly, provocatively out from countless magazine spreads, with the VHS being hot property in the local Blockbuster. Fast forward a few years into the new century and Wild Things stock was still high; the lads mags continued their obsession, placing Denise Richards repeatedly on lists of the ‘Sexiest Women’, whilst Empire and the fondly remembered Hot Dog would still occasionally fill their pages with odes to the movie as it plotted the course of the movie’s stars, from Matt Dillon’s surprising comeback and Campbell’s return to the Scream franchise to Richards’ status of both Bond girl and Mrs Charlie Sheen. And the film itself had a surprisingly long shelf life thanks to three straight-to-DVD sequels between 2004 and 2010. But, for whatever reason, I never got around to it. Viewed today, it’s an interesting experience. I have enough nostalgia for the 90s to appreciate the culture it depicts, but no nostalgia for the film itself. As such, I can see it with far less rose-tinted glasses than some – and I suspect many male audience members may have needed glasses as a direct result of watching Wild Things!

Wild Things takes place, pointedly so, in Blue Bay, an affluent, des-res yachting community in the South of Florida. I say pointedly so because these earthly Garden of Eden lies just an apple’s throw from the famous, untamed Everglades – the swampy home of dangerous alligators. In Wild Things, something wicked is forever lurking beneath the idyllic sun-kissed surface. It seems like McNaughton and screenwriter Stephen Peters are out to make a sultry, sleazy and sweaty neo-noir as we’re introduced to Matt Dillon’s school guidance counsellor Sam Lombardo, and rival students Suzie Marie Toller (Campbell) and Kelly Van Ryan (Richards), the former all heavy kohl eyes, pale complexion, bird-flipping angst from the wrong side of the tracks, the latter a spoiled little rich girl whose all tits and teeth and who seldom hears the word ‘no’. A tangled web develops when both girls accuse the educator of rape, bringing Kevin Bacon’s dogged detective, Bill Murray’s, neck brace adorned, ambulance-chasing defence lawyer and Robert Wagner’s blue-blooded powerful prosecutor into the proceedings. I’ll say one thing for Wild Things, it has a cast better than it has a right to be.

It’s from here that the erotic neo-noir starts to get very twisty indeed. Is Lombardo a hapless patsy hung out to dry on the whims of two embittered teenage girls or is he, as Bacon’s cop begins to suspect, guilty of a scam to relieve Kelly’s man-eating mother (Theresa Russell, Mrs Nic Roeg herself – again, loaded cast! Oh and did I mention Carrie Snodgrass is Suzie’s white-trash mom?!) of some of her significant wealth? If so, exactly what role have both girls played in the proceedings? I’m not going to divulge all the plot elements here, so you can relax. I will say that at around an hour in Wild Things may reveal its hand but, with a further fifty minutes to go, be prepared for some aces up its sleeve. A series of whiplash-inducing twists, each increasingly more melodramatic than the last, play out until the screen fades out – indeed, the film is so stuffed that some even continue as the credits roll!

As I say, I watched this for the first time in 2022, Wild Things is obviously a different experience than it would have been watched back in the day. The Hollywood of the late twentieth century mined the noir of its heyday, mixing serpentine narrative with outright sleaze. Movies such as Body Heat, Basic Instinct, Sliver and Disclosure arrived, seemingly goading each successive instalment to top the last. It’s easy to see Wild Things as part of a cycle of such movies and, for a 90s audience, I suspect with each taboo being busted, cinema seemed increasingly daring and debauched. Viewed now, I’m mindful of what Roger Ebert said in his review, that it is a movie for “a connoisseur of melodramatic comic vulgarity”. With the passage of time, I personally found Wild Things comic; pretty laughably dumb in fact. I could also see exactly what it influenced the most – Hollyoaks Later, with its doe-eyed, duck-lipped temptresses and six-packed, chisel-jawed hunks up to their heaving cleavages and pulsing pecs in salaciously tawdry, post-watershed drama. Wild Things is a thriller for teens, possessing an ‘aren’t we naughty?’ giddy glee in its trashy, campy twists and turns. It’s the kind of film I’m not sure would be made today, too flippant is it at the issues it raises. It’s just very, very 1990s. And if you want to take a trip back in time, then I’m sure you’ll want to pick this one up.

The Arrow release contains both the original theatrical cut and an extra version that boasts the title ‘Unrated Edition’, each newly restored to 4K. Before you get too excited, the enticingly titled latter restores sequences that are mostly exposition rather than titillation. There is also a Making Of documentary, outtakes, trailers, a string of new and archive interviews with cast and crew and an audio commentary headed up by McNaughton and several behind the scenes personnel. The attractive package is rounded off with a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film, a series of postcards and a double-sided, fold-out poster.

Mark on Wild Things