The Skulls is a 2000 American thriller film directed by Rob Cohen and starring Joshua Jackson, Paul Walker and Leslie Bibb.

Its plot is based upon some of the conspiracy theories surrounding Yale University's Skull and Bones student society.

An orphaned "townie" who grew up on the "wrong side of the tracks", he did well enough in school to attend college on a scholarship where he is a champion rower.

Luke passes the first part of the initiation process by stealing an artifact from a rival secret society.

He does this with boxing prodigy Caleb Mandrake, who The Skulls declare his co-conspirator and "soulmate".

Luke and Caleb are lectured in the secret ritual room by a senior Skull who is standing in front of a wall with the word "WAR" engraved into it in huge capital letters.

With their help, Luke obtains the Skulls security tapes that prove Lombard committed the murder.

Ames Levritt is blackmailed into voting against Luke by Litten Mandrake, who has pictures of him with his much younger mistress.

Litten tries to take his son's place in the duel but is denied the opportunity due to another Skull rule.

In March 1999 Universal acquired the U.S. and U.K. rights as part of an expansion into teen driven genre fare.

The site's critics consensus states: "The Skulls is full of nonsense and empty of a good script and plot".

[5] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B on scale of A to F.[6] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it "so ludicrous in so many different ways it achieves a kind of forlorn grandeur".