The episode of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? covering The Skulls was Written and Narrated by Mike Holtz, Edited by Jaime Vasquez, Produced by Andrew Hatfield and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.
Elite secret societies, handsome dudes, the end of the nineties, the beginning of the 2000s, and even Shooter McGavin chasing Pacey from Dawson’s Creek across campus to the sounds of Fatboy Slim. Hell, we’ll even throw a Creed song on the soundtrack. Today, we take a deep dive into a time capsule of a movie that is as maligned as it is beloved. A film that answers the question that no one ever thought to ask…what happens when you mix a serious thriller like John Grisham’s The Firm, that was so popular in the 90s, with the hip world of emerging teen dramas and slashers? When a subgenre riding the wave of the cultural phenomenon of Scream and its many successors ran headfirst into a quote, unquote DAD thriller? A movie described as laughable by some critics but considered by others an entertaining, easy-to-watch comfort throwback….This is just What The F*ck Happened to The Skulls.
The Skulls (watch it HERE), for the uninitiated, follows Luke McNamara, a Yale Senior, financially eeking his way through his college years with no family or advantages but thriving through sheer hard work and determination. Much to the dismay and concern of his everyday friends, Luke is initiated into a secret society for the elite of the elite called “The Skulls”. An organization run by not only the most influential on campus but an extremely powerful group of alumni who have their fingers in everything from politics to law enforcement.
This is sort of the fun part of the film, as Luke’s entire existence changes for the better. He finds what he thinks is the family he’d always wished he had, a sudden deposit of 20 thousand dollars in his bank account, his choice of sports cars and women, and for the first time in his life…a wide-open future. But when one of his friends goes and completely f*cks it all up for him, finding himself dead in the process…Luke has to make a choice: do the right thing and sound the alarm on his secret society’sshady dealings (and maybe find himself dead as well)…or turn the other cheek and receive in return everything he ever wanted. It’s kind of hard to watch because a part of you is rooting for him to just go the easy route…that friend of his got himself into that mess, you know? He was kind of being a whiney little prick about all this in my opinion. Hey, don’t look at me like that.
The Skulls is a wild ride because while it’s a little bit silly in its premise and the way things shake out…it also raises some very interesting questions about the powers that run the world. Even if you’re not the tinfoil hat type, it’s hard not to agree with Luke’s super needy dead friend that “if it’s secret and elite, it can’t be good.” Which is exactly what was on the mind of Yale graduate and US Marshall’s writer John Pogue when he wrote The Skulls. Pogue leaned heavily on his personal experience with secret societies on campus, saying, “I thought they were a myth. When I became a senior, I found out that they weren’t and that within this already elite institution, there was an even smaller elite group or groups that had their own rules, mysteries, and culture and that these people were very powerful throughout the world and the United States”. And something I had no idea about when I watched this movie in theaters wearing my oversized Union Bay sweatshirt in the year 2000?
He was right. The Skulls is based on a real-life organization, The Order of the Skull and Bones, existing on that very same Yale campus. The secret society was founded in 1832 and annually chooses fifteen members of high society standing or great influence among the campus seniors. Many of whom went on to great success and prominent positions in the world, and as director Rob Cohen would explain… some even became the President of the United States.
Cohen would explain his interest in taking the film, saying, “Skull and Bones have had a long and very interesting history. Including Wild Bill Donovan and the formation of the OSS which became the CIA. It’s membership of Abril Harama and George Bush and George Bush JR.” He continued, “(there is) CIA lurking in there somewhere, keeping secrets, secret societies, it’s all true. Whether the rituals as we portrayed them are true? We made them up to be cinematic, dramatic, and fun to watch. But they are based in truth. The roots are true.”
Which is something lead actor Joshua Jackson confirmed, when he said,” There’s only so much that anyone knows about what goes on in the hallowed halls of the Skulls tomb but…uh…What we do know we tried to incorporate in the film and then we kind of dramatized, fictionalized after that”
So, we have a super serious premise here, right? One that reflects an ongoing conversation in the world about the Illuminati and all these hot-button issues. The Skulls seems perfect for the world of a Jack Ryan-style political thriller or even an Eyes Wide Shut-type film if you’re feeling naughty. Not during a time when movies like Scream 3 and Final Destination were releasing and the teen ensemble flick was all the rage… After all, we were dealing with a group of college kids. And that’s where the sauce mixes in all sorts of weird areas…but I like it. That sounded wrong and I apologize. A little.
Here’s where the casting comes in. As the film opens and the underrated courtroom-thriller style Randy Edelman score kicks in, we’re introduced to the hazy campus of Yale and our leading man, Joshua Jackson as Luke McNamara furiously working out alone in the early morning hours, doing rowing training…or whatever this is called.
This is one of the many aspects of The Skulls that makes it a comfort film for me and others. Not only is this all a nice blast from the past back to a specific moment in pop culture, but it’s oddly sleepy and relaxing for a thriller (in a good way).
For one, Jackson being cast in the lead was a nice change of pace for his fans. The actor had become a huge heartthrob and ensemble cast mainstay thanks to another Kevin Williamson project, Dawson’s Creek, where he played the character of Pacey, who was essentially the black sheep of his family. Pacey was funny, troubled, romantic and women adored him for it, as you can tell by watching any press he did for The Skulls at the time. Before that, he could be seen in character roles in a nice collection of post-Scream films including Scream 2, Urban Legend, and Cruel Intentions, often stealing many of the scenes he found himself participating in. Jackson may not have looked like the toughest dude in the biker gang at the time, but he proved himself to be a perfect contrast to the Laguna Beach-type trust fund kids that he would be around in The Skulls. In a deleted scene of the film, Caleb Mandrake lovingly adorns him with the nickname “crabgrass”. Which, as he puts it is, “the weed that grows through the crack in the sidewalks….dogs piss on it, kids step on it. It still thrives.”
This relationship between Luke and Caleb Mandrake was at the heart of The Skulls, which is why the casting of the late Paul Walker was a total home run. That’s not to say Paul Walker was some sort of rich kid snob or anything like that but with his charming smile, blonde hair, and blue eyes…well, look at the guy. There was a reason he so perfectly portrayed the starting quarterback who had it all in Varsity Blues. But just the same, life wasn’t as great as it seemed on the surface.
Caleb seemed like had it all but was weighed down by the lack of love from his father and one of the main figures of the organization, Litten Mandrake; played by none other than Coach himself, Craig T. Nelson. No offense to Craig Nelson but he was perfect for the role here, channeling the same kind of rich butthole he portrayed as the wife murdering businessman in The Devil’s Advocate, now featuring a mustache. But back to Walker, who, for my money, gave an underrated performance. His character went from super-douche… telling a girl whose path he was in during a rowboat race (or whatever you call it) to “imagine it” instead of moving out of her way….to a character who you kind of felt for as he was so deeply trapped and weighed down in cognitive dissonance. Sure, he was a rich kid who had it all but deeply admired his friend Luke for the way he’d had to earn everything he was given and could make his own choices. The Skulls, despite how critics felt (which we’ll get to) played a part in the early star turn for Walker, who would star in The Fast and the Furious film just a year later.
In a bit of casting irony, James Van Der Beek was at one point up for Joshua Jackson’s role as Luke. Whereas Joshua Jackson was once considered for Van Der Beek’s role as Mox in Varsity Blues….which was the role of the guy who took Paul Walker’s characters spot as the star quarterback in Varsity Blues. Then two of them ended up on Dawson’s Creek togeth-holy Hell, I’m getting a 90s style 7/11 Slurpee brain freeze.
The elder Skulls, led by the aforementioned Craig Nelson were full of familiar faces as well, including Fear and Manhunter’s William Peterson with one of those “oh f*ck this guy is rich” uppity southern draws, and Shooter McGavin himself, Christopher McDonald, who can both be a hilarious bad guy who eats pieces of shit for breakfast, or a plug and play corporate Dad bad guy for any project you need. Here, he spends most of his time oddly playing the muscle for the higher-ups. This is super weird, considering they are supposed to be this vast secret society with endless reach, but they have his character of all people out chasing college kids? You would think that’d be a job for the Winklevoss twins of the world, but regardless, he’s always a nice face to see.
Rounding out the cast are Luke’s best buddy and guy who totally screwed all this up for him, Will Beckford, played by Hill Harper who not only would team up again with director Rob Cohen on The Boy Next Door but is also a New York Times Best Selling Author and Political Candidate these days. His character, however, was a super needy, toxic best friend who should have just minded his own business. I’m clearly hung up on this. Fun fact: the character was based on Rob Cohen’s roommate in College, which makes me feel bad for him.
Luke’s love interest in the film, Chloe, was played by Leslie Bibb, whose recognizable face can be seen in everything from Iron Man to Trick R’ Treat. The love story between these two, which culminates in a steamy Jason Bourne-style PG-13 shower bang, had a nice friendship spin on it that separated it a bit from your traditional relationships in these types of movies. Plus, it was nice to know that after Luke went and rightfully dicked all this up for himself, he was going to be fine no matter what…because Chloe came from a buttload of money.
While the cinematography of The Skulls feels forever trapped in this early DVD haze with a weird hint of Saw vibes…it did feature an underrated Ivy school atmosphere not that unlike Fincher’s Social Network. Filmed mostly in Toronto at the University of Toronto and made to look like Yale. It’s said that a part of the Skulls headquarters was filmed at University College in Toronto, but all I wanna know is where this “War” room is. It’s an entire aura all by itself. It’s like a scary rich asshole version of Zordon’s Power Rangers command center. I just want to check e-mails in there and pretend I’m Batman.
When the film was released on March 31st, 2000, it came in number three at the North American box office, trailing both Erin Brockovich and The Road to El Dorado, respectively. The budget of the film had been 35 million and the film, all in all, landed with a total grab of over 50 million worldwide gross. This would be enough for a couple of direct-to-video sequels in The Skulls 2, and The Skulls 3, which don’t feature a continuation of any of our main characters here.
The Skulls was dragged across concrete critically, with Jack Matthews of the New York Daily News comparing it to actual animal feces saying, “Like guano in a bat cave, the implausibility’s pile up.”…Bumble Bee Tuna…. As well as Boston Globe’s Jay Carr throwing in the uppercut, “The Skulls plummets into the realm of ludicrous failure”. The film even ended up on Roger Ebert’s “Most Hated Films” list alongside movies like The Hot Chick (to be fair there are some classics like Tommy Boy on that list too. So put your Herbie Hancock on that, Richard!) The Skulls currently sits with a 9% “Rotten” critics rating on the review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes but a much higher 43% rating from the audience scores.
Here’s the thing about The Skulls, though. I think because of the time period where you had so many studios trying to capitalize on the whole “teenage ensemble cast” thing, the film gets unfairly portrayed as some cheesy, half-assed, cash grab. And sure, Universal acquired the rights for the sole reason to get into these teen films.
But when you listen to Cohen and his cast talk about the film, it was anything but. Cohen wanted to not capitalize on what had come before but rather use that as a gateway for young people at the time to be introduced to the thriller genre using a subject they were interested in….College. He fought back against some of the critiques of his movie, saying, “I had in my mind that I was telling the story of George Senior and George W. Bush. I had gone to Harvard that had the dining clubs, but not the Skull and Bones, the secret societies. But I knew a lot about the secret societies, and I thought ‘this is how the elite functions. This is how the elite knits together these bonds that take them through life and keep them in the elite heights of any society’, and I was very excited about portraying that with Paul and Josh and all the cast. To create this secret world of power elites…that was very exciting to me and I got the cast excited about that idea. It’s interesting how many of the critics missed this and didn’t understand it and blew it off as silly. Skull and Bones is a reality and the film got very close to how that reality works at Yale”.
There are indeed quite a few similarities between The Skulls and the real world of secret societies. From the way they allegedly manage their funds, to “tap day”, and stealing other elite groups’ mascots (which is an activity called “crooking” apparently…f*cking rich people, am I right?). The island they escape to is based on a real place called Deer Island where the members congregate, and so forth.
The story of Luke is also more thoughtful than it is given credit for. Some interesting deleted scenes show Mandrake revealing to Luke that his Mother, long thought to be dead in real life, had actually abandoned him to start another family. Which not only added to his sense of needing to belong but made his decision to leave all that behind to do the right thing all the more difficult. Cohen compared it to the stories of Faust where he had to choose to give up everything he ever wanted in the name of doing what was right. But in the end of this story, his sacrifice was rewarded with love, and a more fulfilling, probably still successful life. As Cohen said, “I thought it was a really great story for young people. I thought they needed that”.
Add this to the gushing of Cohen on set from the cast, who each said that he was an amazing safety net for them early in their careers; Paul Walker mentioned to his agents that whoever he worked with again, he wanted someone like Cohen…who ended up as the director of The Fast and the Furious. Josh Jackson would even seek out one of the actual watches the Skull and Bones members were gifted to give to the director after the shoot. According to Hill Harper, much like in the film itself, the cast were each given a Mustang to drive around during the production and the cast all became very close in the process. Despite the critical opinion of The Skulls, the intention and on-set dynamics couldn’t have been better.
All I can say about The Skulls is that, while dated, it is a personal comfort movie with both great young and experienced actors, an interesting (if a little implausible) story that flies by on every rewatch. And it ends in a mother-f*cking (bleeped) duel. Any non-western that ends in a duel gets an extra bump up. Those are the rules….and we live by the rules and die by the rules. And THAT is what the f*ck happened to The Skulls.
A couple of the previous episodes of WTF Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!