User Reviews

This is bad movie to watch and one of the saddest films you'll ever think about.

Ethan (Matt Mercer) is a college student at Bergan State University. He's sort of a nebbishy guy who looks like a clone of Zach Braff that was taken out of the incubator too soon. He's also a member of the college's Omega Ki fraternity, though it seems as though Ethan is the one who should be getting beaten up from frat boys. Ethan gets a crush on a fellow student named Jennifer (Lauren Schneider). She's a pretty blonde…and that's about as far as her character goes. Ethan helps Jennifer study for her statistics class and then helps her fend off the advances of the lecherous Professor Swenson (Lindsay Ayliffe) before asking Jennifer to go to his frat's formal dance. Jennifer goes, but pulls the old "we're just friends" routine on Ethan at the dance. He then follows her home and Jennifer ends up dead.

Ethan begs his frat brothers Miles (Corey Cici) and Billy (Daniel J. Watts) to help him. Miles takes charge and tries to make it look like Jennifer died in an accidental fire. Of course, Miles uses two gallons of gasoline as an accelerant, which sort of defeats the whole "make it look like an accident" thing. Miles isn't really that bright, though he is a step or two up on Ethan and Billy. Anyway, the cops investigate and question all three guys. They don't get their stories completely straight, Ethan tries to throw suspicion onto Professor Swenson and then Miles and Ethan almost-but-not-quite turn on each other before the film just kind of…ends.

Storywise, this is like a Very Special Episode of "Saved By The Bell", where Screech kills a girl and Zach and Slater help him cover it up. That's about as deep and sophisticated as the movie gets. From a filmmaking standpoint, this is like a very well done student film. It might get you an "A" in class but it's not even close to the standards of a professional, commercial piece of work. Almost every scene goes on too long. There's a prologue that's a pathetic attempt at being clever and an epilogue that's a pathetic attempt at being touching. The background and atmospheric music in this movie is so terrible, you'll feel like tearing your eardrums out with an ice cream scoop. And when writer/director John Schwert skips over Ethan killing Jennifer and then spend the second half of the film showing us little flashes of what happened before revealing the whole thing at the end, I don't think even he really understood what the point of that was.

This movie isn't aggressively terrible, but only the people involved in making this movie could possibly enjoy it. It has nothing at all to offer the rest of us, except the weird resemblances of Ethan, Billy and Miles. I've already covered the Zach Braff thing, but Billy also looks like the slightly retarded brother of Dule Hill from The West Wing and Psyche. Miles, for his part, looks like the cousin of Alexander Chaplin, that guy who played James on Spin City.

I mentioned that this would be a sad movie to think about. Apparently, it's based on the actual death of a female college student. The end credits say the girl's brother spent 10 years investigating her death and the back cover of the DVD says the brother took all his theories and suspicions and made a story out of them from which Among Brothers was adapted. The end credits say no one was ever convicted of the girl's death. Which would make this tedious, uninspired and amateurish production that dead girl's legacy. That's very sad.

The film is about an unsolved crime, but in the film itself there is nothing unsolved about it; the crime is shown in all its gory detail. With what the police are presumed to have known, one would imagine that the investigation could have been completed. At the least, the police could have pursued it with far greater diligence than they did.

Why was the investigation placed on hold? Why, if it is a true story, does it make accusations which have to be libelous? Why, if it is only suggested by a true story is there no disclaimer? Why does the story jump from a police interrogation to an ordinary campus graduation scene some time later? A film doesn't have to answer all the questions it raises: movies such as Cache leave a lot unanswered, for instance. In this one, however, the gaps add nothing; they are just gaps.

Among Brothers is a disturbing look into the secret society of fraternities and the bond that some members hide behind. Matt Mercer adds an air of nervous energy in his portrayal of Ethan, the brother who holds too many secrets. Watching him unravel and still try to hold himself together is terrifying. Mercer keeps Ethan on the edge, ready to capitulate and yet forcing himself to stay stoic. There is an excellent supporting cast behind Mercer and his slow erosion of Ethan's sanity. Most disturbing is how easily the events unfold and how quickly the brothers first fall in line behind their Greek Wall and then start to turn on one another.