The lost pilot to “Coach.”

What “The Skulls” was going for was handsome, scary mystique. Admire the beautiful, rich Ivy League boys and their secret, powerful college club where they learn to rule the world! But also fear them — for their cabal can obscure mortal evils and anyone who crosses them will die! (This isn’t analysis: title cards basically spell out this premise and the movie starts out with a study group going over that very concept as they analyze C. Wright Mills’ essay “The Power Elite.”)

What we got instead was a glimpse inside a secret society whose greatest achievement appears to be its ability to be completely boring and thoroughly over-the-top at the same time: members drug themselves and awake in softly spotlit coffins at what appears to be the Phantom of the Opera’s avant garde runway show.

New pledges have to change the light bulbs in the coffin lake room.

The man who will always go by “Coach” even if you can’t remember his actual name, er, Craig T. Nelson greets our measly hero, Luke (Joshua Jackson) and his fellow inductees in another strange, menacing cavern — what appears to be a Hugo Boss boutique with “WAR” scarily carved into the walls — but not-so-scarily lit by three recessed spotlights, and flanked by catwalks where shadowy men stand, proving the society has so much bribe power it can get away with building balconies without guardrails. Which is about the limit of their power, pitiably.

No, you’re Minnesota State Screaming Eagles Coach Hayden Fox.

“The Skulls” came out at an opportune time, halfway through Joshua Jackson’s career-making role as Pacey “I name my boat ‘True Love’” Witter in “Dawson’s Creek,” in which he never did anything more interesting than lose his virginity to a teacher in the first episode. One expects it to be a by-the-book teen-pleaser about how a good boy has a flirtation with the dark side of power but ultimately Does The Right Thing. And by “by-the-book” I mean “could have been ripped straight from R. L. Stine’s ‘Fear Street’ series.” Instead, we get a strangely sincere subplot about male “soul mates,” a concept that is ridiculous no matter who applies it to whom, but is at least consistent throughout this drek movie.

“My soul mate is this green skull made out of Nickelodeon slime,

a tribute to the stern-faced silliness of John Pogue, who wrote this horrible movie.”

Oh, and there’s the scene that out-grosses the seven-movie torture franchise of “Saw” — a sex/money/horsepower fantasy montage set to the unspeakable horrors of Creed’s megachurch rock, to illustrate the fantastic things the newly branded (literally) club members get for their loyalty.

Nothing gets me in the mood more than Creed.

If you mean the mood to vomit and stab my eardrums simultaneously.

The new recruits are treated to Breitling watches, white bow ties, champagne and a bevy of pinched-face young East Coast ice queens sporting this season’s tribute to “drab,” a collection of evening wear from Ann Taylor that quietly hisses, “don’t touch me tonight, honey.”

“Lance, you’ve got to help me move into my new apartment.

You’re the only one they gave a Range Rover to!”

The boys also get cars — a few muscle cars, a Porsche, a Ferrari and… wow, a Mazda? I feel sorry for that guy.

And then, they kiss.

They also get lowered into the ground to share secrets with each other in a cage I hope someone saved, in case “Shark Week” ever adds a steampunk segment.

The reason Luke finally rejects all the Truth or Dare trust exercises, invites to bourbon-soaked Thanksgiving hunting retreats, pre-approved all-expenses-paid rides to the law school of his choice and fancy trips out to private islands? His Skulls-hating friend, Will, smashes his way into the car belonging to Luke’s club-decreed “soul mate” to steal his club key and rule book to write an architectural exposé on the Ritual Room’s “nearly 10 pillars made entirely of travertine marble.” He dies, his death made to look like a suicide. The Skulls say it was an accident that, they note, happened during the commission of a crime. Thanks to a convenient hidden panel that falls open, revealing to Luke what seems to be the most un-damning file on a secret society a journalist could ever put together, Our Hero decides foul play is afoot. He furrows his brow and throws himself into angry, cartilage-shredding reps on the rowing machine, negligently greased to allow it to creak angrily and thus, display to the audience how upset he is at the moral quandary and how committed he is to revenge — committed enough to pick back up with his old group of pre-Skulls car-thieving friends, commit a few more crimes of invasion and aggravated battery (equipped with walkie talkies and monster masks and grappling hooks, for heaven’s sake), get arrested and be thrown in a psych ward, drooling, unable to walk, because his threat to the cover-up is just. That. Serious.

Yes. A frat that can involuntarily commit an adult. This is exactly how things happen.

The funniest thing about Luke’s ultimate decision on the society is that it’s neither a decision made from his strength of character nor the noble, good-guy thing to do.

From the very beginning, he tells his friends that he wants to be a part of the group not for camaraderie, but for cutthroat reasons — so he can get his law degree at Harvard paid for. And even before becoming a member, Luke operates as though the world’s rules don’t apply to him, physically attacking a student at a school eatery because he snarked to a girl that she was a “bitch” in the very first scene. He engages in a felony-level criminal conspiracy to break and enter as well as damage some very expensive property the second the group asks him to. When he discovers $20,000 in his account, he whoops in the street, never once questioning the money’s origins. But when explicitly warned that his eventual wife and children will come to harm (at which point I would think anyone, especially an aspiring lawyer, would be able to rationalize accepting a lifetime of incredible riches and power to prevent) he walks away, a short-sighted egotist, smirking as though he’ll be able to escape his reckless and morally compromised decisions one way or another. All he really cares about is his dead pal Will — his real soul mate.

Ashley O’Dell reviews movies that aren’t in the theater anymore. She lives in North Hollywood, near the In-N-Out Burger.