This movie can best be described as Perfectly Acceptable Entertainment. I could rip this thing to shreds if I wanted to, but criticizing a film like this for not being very good is like yelling at your dog because he doesn't play the piano. Your dog doesn't know how to play the piano and doesn't want to learn. The Hazing never wants or tries to be more than a momentary distraction and it succeeds at that very modest ambition.
After opening up with what appears to be a heavy metal music video from the 1980s about a magic book that might as well have "Not The Necronomicon" engraved on its cover, the story gets going with the creepy looking Professor Kapps (Brad Dourif) killing one of his students for a nefarious, sorcerous purpose. It then shifts over to 5 young people being sent out on a co-ed, fraternity/sorority initiation scavenger hunt. There's handsome but dickish Doug (Philip Andrew), horny Roy (Jeremy Maxwell), shy Tim (Parry Shen), beautiful bimbo Delia (Nectar Rose) and the smart and bitchy but still hot Marsha (Tiffany Shepis). They have to get a bunch of stuff and then spend the night in a allegedly haunted house to pass their initiation, with the heads of the fraternity and sorority planning to scare the crap out of them Scooby-Doo style.
It turns out the "Not The Necronomicon" magic book is on the scavenger hunt list, so Doug and Marsha decide to break into Professor Kapps house and steal it. They end up killing him but decide to not let that spoil anything, so they just grab the book and head to the supposedly haunted house. However, Kapps actually wanted someone to kill him so he could okay, that stuff doesn't make any sense. It's just a pretense for Kapps to become an evil spirit and spend the rest of the movie tormenting and trying to kill the 5 kids and Jacob and Justine (David Tom and Charmaine DeGrate), the heads of the fraternity and sorority.
This movie couldn't have been more obviously inspired by Sam Rami's Evil Dead films if the writer/director had walked into a scene in the middle of The Hazing and read a 3 page speech of admiration for Rami. Unfortunately, Rolfe Kanefsky isn't close to being as talented or skilled as Rami and his story doesn't work very hard at being either genuinely scary or legitimately funny. It manages, however, to be just enough of each to be worthwhile if you're into the whole horror-comedy genre.
The parts of this film are definitely better than the whole. The computerized effects are cruddy, but the physical effects, props and make-up are pretty good. The direction is basic but unobjectionable and the plot, such as there is, keeps moving at a decent clip. There are a couple of points in the script where Kanefsky all but sends up a flare to tell the audience "Look! I'm doing something different!" but while his creative writing shtick isn't very good, it's not aggressively bad and it's over and forgotten fairly quickly.
The acting is as good as you can expect out of this sort of movie and maybe a bit better. Brooke Burke does look like she's still reading off a teleprompter at the E channel, David Tom has the douchebag knob turned up to 11 for Jacob and there's a stretch where Philip Andrew is apparently doing Freddy Kruger as if he were portrayed by Jim Carrey, but overall the performances in The Hazing are relatively enjoyable. Nectar Rose is clearly the most appealing out of the bunch, and not just because she's very pretty and takes her top off. She has to make a big shift in Delia's character at one point in the story and she pulls it off. Tiffany Shepis also makes Marsha likably tough and gets naked as well.
The Hazing is what it is. If you've got high standards or at least think you have high standards for the horror-comedy genre, you could make fun of this movie for not being very good. My standards may be low, but I thought it was a bit better than okay. I know that doesn't appear to be a ringing endorsement but considering all the stinking pieces of cinematic excrement sitting on video store shelves across the world making a film that's a bit better than okay is something to be proud of. Not too proud, though.
After opening up with what appears to be a heavy metal music video from the 1980s about a magic book that might as well have "Not The Necronomicon" engraved on its cover, the story gets going with the creepy looking Professor Kapps (Brad Dourif) killing one of his students for a nefarious, sorcerous purpose. It then shifts over to 5 young people being sent out on a co-ed, fraternity/sorority initiation scavenger hunt. There's handsome but dickish Doug (Philip Andrew), horny Roy (Jeremy Maxwell), shy Tim (Parry Shen), beautiful bimbo Delia (Nectar Rose) and the smart and bitchy but still hot Marsha (Tiffany Shepis). They have to get a bunch of stuff and then spend the night in a allegedly haunted house to pass their initiation, with the heads of the fraternity and sorority planning to scare the crap out of them Scooby-Doo style.
It turns out the "Not The Necronomicon" magic book is on the scavenger hunt list, so Doug and Marsha decide to break into Professor Kapps house and steal it. They end up killing him but decide to not let that spoil anything, so they just grab the book and head to the supposedly haunted house. However, Kapps actually wanted someone to kill him so he could okay, that stuff doesn't make any sense. It's just a pretense for Kapps to become an evil spirit and spend the rest of the movie tormenting and trying to kill the 5 kids and Jacob and Justine (David Tom and Charmaine DeGrate), the heads of the fraternity and sorority.
This movie couldn't have been more obviously inspired by Sam Rami's Evil Dead films if the writer/director had walked into a scene in the middle of The Hazing and read a 3 page speech of admiration for Rami. Unfortunately, Rolfe Kanefsky isn't close to being as talented or skilled as Rami and his story doesn't work very hard at being either genuinely scary or legitimately funny. It manages, however, to be just enough of each to be worthwhile if you're into the whole horror-comedy genre.
The parts of this film are definitely better than the whole. The computerized effects are cruddy, but the physical effects, props and make-up are pretty good. The direction is basic but unobjectionable and the plot, such as there is, keeps moving at a decent clip. There are a couple of points in the script where Kanefsky all but sends up a flare to tell the audience "Look! I'm doing something different!" but while his creative writing shtick isn't very good, it's not aggressively bad and it's over and forgotten fairly quickly.
The acting is as good as you can expect out of this sort of movie and maybe a bit better. Brooke Burke does look like she's still reading off a teleprompter at the E channel, David Tom has the douchebag knob turned up to 11 for Jacob and there's a stretch where Philip Andrew is apparently doing Freddy Kruger as if he were portrayed by Jim Carrey, but overall the performances in The Hazing are relatively enjoyable. Nectar Rose is clearly the most appealing out of the bunch, and not just because she's very pretty and takes her top off. She has to make a big shift in Delia's character at one point in the story and she pulls it off. Tiffany Shepis also makes Marsha likably tough and gets naked as well.
The Hazing is what it is. If you've got high standards or at least think you have high standards for the horror-comedy genre, you could make fun of this movie for not being very good. My standards may be low, but I thought it was a bit better than okay. I know that doesn't appear to be a ringing endorsement but considering all the stinking pieces of cinematic excrement sitting on video store shelves across the world making a film that's a bit better than okay is something to be proud of. Not too proud, though.