The movies are littered with comical depictions of fraternity culture, but the reality, as we know all too well, is considerably darker. While there have been movies that explore this in the form of horror, none recently strike a visceral chord quite like Ethan Berger’s The Line. This searing, thrilling look at Greek Letter life is driven by a transformative performance by star Alex Wolff and the unshakeable feeling that this story is being played out in frat houses everywhere.
Berger wastes no time showing us the dangerous path The Line is headed. In the opening moments we see the long lineage of fictional fraternity KNA; nary a black or brown face is seen anywhere in its photographic history. The film centers on blue-collar kid Tom (Wolff), who molds himself to fit in with the spoiled, wealthy white dudes in KNA, banking on the brotherhood he forms to light his business future. It’s all about connections, and one thing The Line establishes is how much the need to fit in and find acceptance plays into fraternity pledging. When a school administrator warns fraternity president Todd (the ubiquitous Lewis Pullman) and Tom of repercussions if there’s any hazing, we already can see this is going to go badly for them all.
The Line takes us into the dog-eat-dog social order within KNA. Todd sits at the top with a kind of cool detachment of a leader on his way out the door. He sees Tom as a potential successor, though, which makes things difficult when his volatile best bud Mitch (Bo Mitchell in a star-making performance) starts dishing out emotional and physical punishment on the crop of new pledges, most of all at Gettys (Wolfs breakout Austin Abrams), a snobby but defiant rich kid.
The bulk of The Line centers on this explosive power dynamic, with Tom caught in the middle. Mitch and Gettys are the most interesting pair by far. An overweight, high-pitched guy who looks like he probably had a rough go as a pledge himself, Mitch revels in the little bit of power that he holds over the pledges. He rules over them cruelly and at every turn. Gettys, seeing Mitch as a weak bully just dying to get punched in the mouth, stands up to him and risks not being accepted to maintain his sense of self. The question is whether Tom has the strength to do the same?
Forcing Tom to wrestle with that question is Annabelle, played by The Little Mermaid and The Color Purple‘s Halle Bailey. A progressive Black woman with a brain on her shoulders, she’s everything that KNA doesn’t like and definitely doesn’t want for its members. Tom quickly falls head over heels for her (despite her unshaven armpits), and after brushing him off as a dumbass frat boy (she’s kinda not wrong), she begins to warm up to him. But this subplot feels shoehorned in to give Tom something active to do, because he’s more of a mediator for the rest of the film. Bailey, as the film’s biggest star, deserves better and a lot more screen time than she gets.
The Line is compelling when it’s most incisive, and this is during the slower moments when we see the campus power dynamics at play. These scenes are filled with a slew of fast-rising stars giving strong performances, along with a sad farewell to the late Angus Cloud in his final on-screen role. Wolff stands out for the complete transformation he undergoes to become Tom. Packing on pounds of muscle and altering his accent (referred to as “faux Forrest Gump”), Wolff’s Tom is constantly a man trying to figure out his place, and what he needs to do in the moment to maximize his position in the frat. Sometimes that means standing up for the pledges, but more often than not it means allowing the abuse to continue just enough to impress the others. When the inevitable blow up happens, it’s one of the most disturbing hazing sequences ever put to film, not because it’s especially brutal. What’s notable about it is that we don’t actually see much viciousness at all. It’s because of the sheer aggression, and the clashing of wills that can only end horribly. We see it coming from a mile away but it’s like an unstoppable freight train.
Not that Berger is saying anything new with The Line, and to be fair, the time when hazing films were plentiful has passed. But there’s resonance in the story that Berger is telling, because rich white guys banding together so they can all get away with murder is still very much a thing. If you wonder why our politics is the way it is, all of it starts in the fraternity houses where antiquated traditions have bred a culture of toxic masculinity that the rest of us must contend with.
The Line opens in theaters on October 18th.
