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The film was directed by Francesco Gabriele and is titled Behave. Its storyline revolves around a group of peculiar young adults who are transported to a luxurious villa on the edge of London after the death of their friend. To their surprise, a curious phenomenon seems to follow them to their lavish getaway.
Underneath the veil of their idyllic holiday lurks an unexplainable mystery that the group must solve. As the entity begins to reveal itself to the group, a sinister Gardener, a popular TikTok influencer, and an elderly reclusive Landlord all become suspects. Join Keira, Andrea, Callum, India, and Lily, all of whom are under the supervision of Andrea’s mother Polly, as they try to navigate their spooky surroundings. The group is sent to the villa to understand how to behave in a contemporary world, and in the process, they learn valuable lessons about who to put their trust in and who not to.
Let’s get this settled first. Be aware that this film touches on themes similarly dealt with in the Scream Universe. Vasily, near the end of Scream, is delineated as an 80’s slasher, having movies like a pseudo-cry Wolf, Valentine, and Urban Legends 2. That allowed being completely immersed in the film while remaining critical to the film and its meaning. Just like the cast of Behave, these characters are needed in real life instead of being fictional movie characters.
On the teacher’s side there is Ms. Polly, who is the supervisor of the trip and has no clue what happened. Then there is the etiquette instructor, Nancy, who is the complete opposite and is ruthless whilst having banter with children. May I suggest blaming the kids themselves? They are the ones causing havoc, after all.
India is the first one to disappear and at the 53-minute mark, we finally find out why the kids we loved were slaughtered. Unlike most slasher movies, the pacing of the storyline and deaths is incredibly slow. We don’t see many deaths, but rather quite a few shocking jumps like when a kid has a nightmare showcase slasher cliches.
This indicates that there’s a greater mystery than horror in the film ‘Behave’ but that is not vastly negative. Especially when, up until that point, there was a debate on whether or not there was actually a killer, a stalker, or a ghost haunting the property or if it was simply in Keira’s (Ema Kosac) imagination.
The question: what is real and what is not? And are the kids in fact at risk? In combination with very little else to capture the audience, that question is what lingers the most. The cast of characters are poorly crafted stereotypes bordering on the actively dislikeable. In fact, outside of Kiera, none of the cast including the adults are likable which means that Behave is deficient in the kind of empathy required to invite the audience to care what happens to anyone which means you start rooting for the killer to off every one of the cast members.
When the killer is revealed only 13 minutes after it is confirmed that this film does have a killer, it strongly feels anticlimactic. Why? The killer’s motivation is such an enormous cliche. It has been done to death in the genre and Behave goes nowhere to attempt to give it a twist or different angle.
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