A professor takes his class on a field trip to experiment with Chumash Indian drug-taking. When they get there, two demented brothers apply their serial killing skills to the group.There is some established talent here - Christian Slater, Wes Bentley, Stephen Dorff on screen, and the writer of Point Break scripting and behind the camera. It is with him that the blame lies, because a film which is, perhaps, hoping to be a bit clever (Slater has delirious dialogues with an animated sock. It's that kind of movie) is, in fact, stuffed with clichés while being semi-incoherent. Bentley's character wanders around in quasi-autistic isolation while Slater is even more wildly over the top than usual. And they are the established talent - imagine what we get from the unknowns. For a slasher, there is very little blood and, for a teen sex movie, well, there isn't any.The story as to how this film got made is many, many times more interesting than the film itself which is, frankly, downright poor. It is, however, very nicely lit and photographed. It is interesting to note that the reviews on IMDb break down broadly into two groups - those who are students at the university featured, live in and around the area where it was filmed, and attended the premiere, who all think it was pretty good, and everyone else, who don't. I'm one of everyone else. I don't think it was pretty good.

THE FINAL RITES (aka RITES OF PASSAGE) is a very strange little movie. It involves a group of high school students who are being taught about esoteric Native American drugs by their slick teacher. One of the students has an elder brother who experiments with these narcotics, which turns him into a psychopath. Inevitably a group of the students go away for the weekend for a beach holiday and find themselves being menaced by all and sundry.There's a definite sense here that the story was being made up as they went along. Certainly it seems to make little sense and by the end it's fallen apart entirely, so the "narrative" consists of characters killing each other off until only the final survivors are left. The first half of the film, which is the build up, is actually mildly enjoyable, so it's a pity that the it goes absolutely nowhere come the end.Three famous faces are mixed up in this mess. Wes Bentley plays virtually the same likable loner/weirdo character as he did in American BEAUTY. Stephen Dorff shows up as a cool teacher who's down with the kids, and strips off to show his buff body when required. Then there's an almost unrecognisable Christian Slater, hilariously playing a demented psychopath who just wants to kill everybody. His interactions with a sock puppet bring to mind the PG Tips adverts in the UK starring Johnny Vegas and Monkey. It's all very silly and relatively bloodless, meaning there's not much here for the viewers.

While Rites of Passage is a low budget film, it was a lot better than I was expecting. The trailer made the movie appear to be a very cheesy scary movie. In reality, it wasn't as scary as it portrayed to be, and there also was some humor to it. The plot is creative and ambitious. It is hard to make a movie about college students getting high and killing each other seem plausible and real. I believe the writers and producers did the best they could to make the unbelievable situation seem possible in Isla Vista, Santa Barbara. Actors Wes Bently and Christian Slater did well in the acting department, but the college girls, other than Ashley, were either just starting their acting careers or need to practice more. All in all it was fun to watch at the premiere, and the Chumash community at the premiere made for an interesting night!

I have to admit that I was very skeptical about watching a low budget film that I had heard nothing about, but Rites of Passage was a non stop thriller that had it all. I was very impressed what Peter Illif was able to do with the cast he was dealt, and also how he was ale to shoot the entire film in Santa Barbara. Their was controversy over the objectification of woman that this film supposedly has, but i thought it was a pretty accurate portrayal of how parties are in Illa Vista. Sure their were parts that went a little too far but its a movie what do you expectOverall the acting was much better then I anticipated. Slater delivered a solid performance and the supporting cast did a very nice job excluding the one actress who was given the role of the bad girl who always curses. The premise of the film was extremely original and is definitely hard to take seriously if you have not taken psychedelic drugs before or understand what they are capable of. I give Rites of Passage 2 thumbs up and recommend it to anyone over 17.