Jimmy Marsden is Steve Clark, a handsome and clean-cut kid whose family relocated from Illinois to the sleepy, picture-postcard environs of Vancouver's Cradle Bay. During his first day at the new high school, Steve is given a quick tutorial in class cliques by cafeteria weirdo Gavin Strick (Nick Stahl). Gavin segments the school population into categories of jocks, loners, geeks ... and an impeccably groomed cluster of kids known as the Blue Ribbons, who are heavily into sports, bake sales, and helping each other study for big tests.

As the plot of a not-entirely-unpleasant B-grade horror movie might have it, the Blue Ribbons, who are chaperoned by a smarmy guidance counselor type played appropriately by Atom Egoyan regular Bruce Greenwood, aren't quite as well-adjusted and friendly as they appear. For one thing, there's a Stepford Wives sort of sameness to all of them. They seem to be on a mission to recruit other students to join the fold, not unlike religious cultists. And when they get horny, they have this unfortunate tendency toward acts of gruesome violence.

No, Disturbing Behavior isn't even half as good as it sounds. There are no scary scenes, there's no edge, and there's no real empathy or understanding for the characters. Rather than developing real characters, Rosenberg chosen veteran TV director David Nutter for a screenplay stocked with character types that seem plucked from lackluster TV programming. Marsden's all-American good looks are so conspicuous that it's hard to believe he'd be hanging out with drug-addled loners like Gavin and his pals rather than hooking up right away with the equally pretty Blue Ribbons. Fetching co-star Katie Holmes, from TV series Dawson's Creek and last year's The Ice Storm, doesn't make any improvements beyond the purely cosmetic. And Greenwood is wasted -- you know a mad-scientist-style horror movie is in trouble when it can't even figure out how to turn the mad scientist's creations against him.

It's tempting to let the director shoulder the blame for a bad movie, but Nutter would have had to demand a rewrite from Rosenberg to make anything worthwhile come out of this script. A rethinking of the primary villain's character, a couple of well-aimed satirical barbs, and one or two truly suspenseful (or simply outrageous) scenes could have made a significant difference. Instead, we're left with a tepid potboiler that doesn't seem to feel that its own story or characters are worth getting exercised about. In marked contrast to the first two Scream movies, or even the workmanlike I Know What You Did Last Summer, here's a movie that condescends to both its target audience and its genre. Stay away.