GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Spoonixel Amateur movie with Big budget

LasKeepsItReal This is my review for the film The Intiation and it shall have several spoilers throughout.The film begins at a house with a group of sorority sisters. Some of the students at college are pledging to become sorority sisters with the sisterhood being lead by Megan we have Kelly,Alison,Beth and Marcia who will have to take part in an initiation before they become part of the group. The are allowed to have a few more days of fun before they are given their initiation.Meanwhile Kelly has been having repetitive nightmares for years about a young girl who enters a room to her parents and witnesses a confrontation between them and a man who is set alight on fire. She tells one of her tutors about this who along with another one of his students gives her some therapy and tries to get her to understand and piece together the meaning of her dreams.At the beginning of the following week Kelly,Alison,Beth and Marcia are due to carry out their initiation which is being given by Megan to break into Kelly's fathers department store and steal a specific item to be used as a souvenir within a time period. Beth gets into an argument with Megan and is eliminated from being part of the sisterhood.The girls go to the department store to fulfill their pledge whilst Megan and a couple of her friends sneak into the store with the intent on making things more difficult for them all. The students are all oblivious to the fact that on the same night a mental patient from a psychiatric ward has escaped with murder on their mind.I enjoyed The Initiation because even though it began with a familiar scenario like that of many of 1980's films in a house and with a sisterhood of some girls what were not a part of wanted to do things in order to be inclusive i like the fact that many of the films scenes were located in a department store which proved to be effective for the suspense and chase scenes. The film also worked as a thriller that was not a simple and straight forward as some others when predicting the plot. I also thought several of the characters were likable from Hunter Tylo's portrayal of Alison who was fun,entertaining and at times naughty to Vera Miles who plays Frances the mother of Kelly that harbors a dark secret to Marilyn Kagen who plays Marcia who was sweet and probably the most mature out of the girls and the way she tells her friends a story about her past even had me a little shocked which added a more serious tone to her character. Daphne Zuniga as Kelly played a worthy and dynamic performance too! The films production values, special effects and music were also professional for a horror film of 1984.I would rate this film 6 out of 10.

buckikris I couldn't believe I never heard of this movie before. It came out in 1984 when I was 12 or 13 depending on the month. I am just wondering if it hit the big screen or went straight to video. This movie is SOLID with a great plot that doesn't rely on gore. The Initiation is not your typical sorority horror flick. The plot is simple, a wealth college student pledges for Delta Ro Kai. It is hell week, Kelly along with the other pledges have to pull off a prank. The pledge master gives them a whopper too. Kelly( Daphne Zuniga) is told to get her father's keys to his mall. Her father Dwight Fairchild(Clu Gulager) owns Fairchild mall. Kelly's mother Frances Fairchild(Vera Miles) is a socialite. While she is a pledge she is still having awful nightmare about the same guy who was tragically burned up at her house when she was young. She keeps having them over and over; and feels this will jeopardize her chances of getting in. She decides to met with her psychology T.A., to see what can be learned from them. A close relationship is formed; and she tells about her hopes of joining a sorority. About 2 weeks go by and it is Hell Night and little do the pledges of Delta Ro know that a killer has escaped from the sanatorium near by. The killer is on their way to Kelly's house and then headed toward the University area. The pledges are told about their mission once there. They are to get into the mall and steal the security guards uniform; and to get out. The pledge master also has a few extra things that are involved that the pledges have no idea about. Megan or Alison (I forget which is the pledge master ) has brought some guys, their friends. They are suppose to scare the S**T out of them. At first it's really freaky a desolate mall and the security guard making his rounds. While on his rounds he is surprised and gets killed before the pledges arrive. Once they are there they are wondering where the security guard is. They just what to cheat get an extra uniform from the office and get out. Once there the group splits up, and the killings begin. They are killed one by one, but a twist is exposed at the end. It will literary make you do a W.T.F. moment. It won't take long to understand once you put two and two together. Unlike most horror films this has a somewhat happy ending.I still shake my head, and wonder whatever happened to good horror films like this. It's sad to see most of today's horror films are silly, no plot, and complete trash. The initiation is true horror from the beginning to end. Everyone who likes Carpenter, Craven, Cunningham, etc. should love this hit.

Toronto85 The Initiation is definitely one of the better 80's horror films. A sorority pledge named Kelly Fairchild is have a recurring dream that holds the key to something traumatic from her childhood. She tells her college professor about it and he starts digging into the family secret surrounding the dream. All of this is going on while the sorority she is in is planning an initiation for Kelly and some of her friends. They have to spend the night in a mall which Kelly's family owns. They end up getting locked in the dark mall with a killer running around knocking many of them off one by one. There is a very neat twist with the killer's identity which leads into those recurring dreams Kelly was having.The cast is pretty good. Vera Miles and Clu Gulager are no strangers to the horror genre. Miles was in Psycho 1 and 2, and Gulager was in A Nightmare on Elm St 2. Daphne Zuniga does good in the lead, and Hunter Tylo (famous from the Bold and the Beautiful) does a good job as well. The setting of the dark spooky mall after hours is very well done. Elevator doors opening, a killer lurking in almost every shadow, and the overall effect of being in a dark mall overnight is just creepy. The murders are sort of gory, one in particular involves one of the girls being stabbed repeatedly at the night watchman's desk.The story of Kelly and her family makes the movie very watchable and adds a good twist to the end of it all. The acting is pretty good and there is a creepiness about the whole being trapped in a mall with a killer on the loose. Definitely check this out if you like horror, especially 80's horror movies.8/10

dbdumonteil Vera Miles was featured in two Alfred Hitchcock movies:"Psycho" and mainly "The wrong man" in which she was remarkable.So when you had been directed for two classics by a genius ,the only way to go was down as far as thrillers were concerned.Vera Miles had taken on the part of Lola in "Psycho II" with so so results.She continued in the horror vein with "The initiation "which is not bad:it's abysmal ;awful directing,laughable lines (bad jokes about sex as usual), mediocre acting (even Miles cannot do anything with her part of a mother with a racy past).The "intellectual" side about Freud and the dreams ,represented by a bland professor (he will probably get a Mickey Mouse doc degree) and his not-very-attractive assistant ,does not show any improvement on the forties shrink movies,the likes of Siodmak's "The dark mirror"(1946) or Hitchcock's himself ("Spellbound" ) (1945) Beginning as a female forerunner of "the skulls" ,"the initiation" becomes a poor man's "spellbound" to end up as a "Friday the thirteenth " in a department store .Of course there are plenty of teenagers and there's a killer at large