College sophomore Tom Backster comes from a relatively hardscrabble background, and he believes with all his heart and ambition that the fraternity life is his ticket to the firmament of society, and that is the Greek (life) tragedy of the propulsively brutal cautionary tale that is “The Line.”
We watch with an increasing sense of foreboding as this smart and seemingly decent young man loses himself in the rampant toxicity of the frat life, making one poor choice after another, oblivious to the cliff in front of him until it’s too late and he’s in mid-air, destined for a horrific crash landing.
Director and co-writer Ethan Berger frames “The Line” as a kind of elevated horror film — but the monsters aren’t supernatural, they’re privileged, misogynistic, bigoted, coke-snorting fraternity brothers at a Southern university who believe the world is theirs for the taking, and anyone who doesn’t conform to their warped belief system is an outsider, a loser, a nobody. It’s not that we haven’t seen this type of frat-life social commentary before, but Berger and the outstanding ensemble infuse his film with a docudrama authenticity. This is a not a movie you can easily shake off.
Alex Wolff (“Pig,” “A Quiet Place: Day One”) does nuanced and compelling work as the aforementioned Tom, a working-class kid who has affected an accent his mother (Cheri Oteri) dubs as “faux Forrest Gump,” the better to fit in with his “brothers” at the fictitious Kappa Nu Alpha fraternity. Tom rooms with the odious Mitch Miller (Bo Mitchell), who gets away with all manner of piggish behavior because his wealthy father (John Malkovich), who has the unforgettable name of Beach Miller, throws money at problems to make them disappear. (Denise Richards plays Mitch’s mother, and she and Malkovich are so good in a dinner scene that we’d watch an entire movie about their relationship, which seems right out of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”)
“The Line” is filled with memorable supporting players, including Lewis Pullman as Todd, the casually arrogant fraternity president; the late Angus Cloud as a particularly hard-partying KNA brother; Austin Abrams (recently stealing scenes in “Wolfs”) as Gettys O’Brien (again with the names in this movie), a charismatic and rebellious pledge who becomes Mitch’s sworn enemy, and Halle Bailey as Annabelle Bascom, a free spirit who becomes Tom’s love interest.
Tom’s fraternity brothers deride Annabelle as a “Black lesbian” and mock him for his interest in her, even though she’s clearly out of his league in every way imaginable and he should be thanking the stars she’s interested in him. It’s a sign of Tom’s woefully misguided sense of priorities that he’d rather spend his nights getting blasted with his fraternity brothers and hazing the incoming freshman class in a borderline cultish environment than in the company of Annabelle. What an idiot.
From the moment early in the film when we learn KNA has been cited in recent years for a total of 17 violations of student conduct codes, we know where this story is headed. Still, it comes as a stunning blow when the hazing rituals cross the line into potentially criminal behavior.
“The Line” ends on a telling note, with a news story playing on a TV in the background reminding us that the more certain things appear to have changed, the more they stay the same.