Extracurricular Activities is a 2019 about a mature, intelligent high school student who has a side job arranging “accidental” deaths of fellow students’ parents.
They say to get success, all you need to do is find an unexplored niche and exploit it. That’s what high schooler Reagan Collins (Colin Ford) seems to have done in director Jay Lowi‘s new comedy Extracurricular Activities, a fresh spin on murder mayhem that follows the handiwork of a young man who helps his fellow classmates with some parenting issues. Specifically, how to make them disappear.
In a well-to-do bedroom community, where all is blissfully benign, things have taken a dark turn. Moms and dads are dropping like flies and only Detective Cliff Dawkins (Timothy Simons) sees the connection. It’s Reagan, a clean-cut, A student who seems to be one step ahead of everyone and always around when the bodies show up. Turns out, Cliff is right, the brainiac high schooler running a secret side business where he offs parents (and others) from classmates soliciting his special services. But can he keep Dawkins out of his hair while also romancing the pretty cheerleader (Ellie Bamber), a girl with her own mommy/daddy issues? There’s plenty to keep you guessing.
Written by Bob Sáenz, the blandly named Extracurricular Activities is a pretty smart comedy with a sharp edge. And while it may lack the dark bite of say something like Michael Lehmann‘s 1988 classic Heathers, it manages to find its way with a homespun style and a bunch of fun performances. That’s led by Simons, who keeps balance best of the off-kilter tone, embracing the tropes of the misdirected cop with just the right amount of Clouseau-sian clumsiness to make it work. We know he’s right, but the fun is in his efforts to get everyone else on the same page. That doesn’t always go as planned.
Ford is purposefully rigid and aggressively smarmy, making it hard to get behind, his motivations never truly explored beyond the money it brings him, which seems like a missed opportunity. However, he sells it enough, though the film never really puts him in the desperately tight spot the story seems ready to wedge him into. It’s sort of too bad as the guy basically has free reign over the whole thing with zero consequences.
Even at about 86 minutes, admittedly, the whole thing isn’t quite as sustainable as it should be, but at least doesn’t cave on the premise, leading us to a spot-on ending that goes exactly where it should (though keen-eyed viewers might see it coming). Sure, some of it doesn’t click, such as a sidekick uniformed cop (Nicholas Cutro), who feels like he oughta be in a different movie, but even with its wrinkles is plenty entertaining.
Extracurricular Activities open in Los Angeles on Friday May 17th at the Laemmle Monica Film Center and has a June 4th digital and On Demand release.