Years ago, three girls were rescued from their abusive foster parents.  Under the direction of the enigmatic Alpha (Jennifer Ferguson), Gina (Meghan Carrasquillo), Dani (Grace Evans), and Bella (Alea Hansinger) have made a lot of money and they only have to work one week out of the year.  That week is Spring Break, when they hit the beach and sell drugs to all the visiting college students.

Unfortunately, a bigtime gangster known as Frosty the Snowman (Shawnee Brittan) does not want Alpha and the Squad moving in on his business.  So, along with targeting Alpha for assassination, he also sends his people down to the beach to take out the members of the Squad.  It all leads to a lot of violence, death, and bikini shots.  Everyone has their own agenda and no one can be trusted, perhaps not even Alpha.  Can the Squad survive or will they end up being dunked in acid?

Just from reading the plot description, you might think that this was a subversive, satirical film in the style of Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers and certainly, there are moments of deliberate humor.  The three Squad members spend a lot of time talking between jobs and making fun of the faux tough guys that they have to deal with.  There’s a slightly funny bit where one of the girls will make a snarky comment and someone else will reply by accusing them of being a very particular type of bully.  “You’re a spray tan bully,” made me laugh more than it probably should have.  (That’s probably because, as a redhead, I can’t tan to save my life.)

That said, The Squad takes itself way too seriously at certain points.  There’s all sorts of twists and turns and scenes of criminals talking about all of the unpleasant tortures that they intend to inflict until they hear what they want to hear.  This is one of those films where all the camera movements are jittery and most of the scense are so underlit that you end up straining eyes just trying to figure out who is talking to who.  For a 78-minute film, there’s a lot going on in The Squad and the plot is almost impossible to follow.  The film makes the mistake of assuming that we’ll automatically care so much about The Squad that we won’t care that their actions rarely make sense.  But since we really don’t get to know either The Squad or Alpha, it’s difficult to get emotionally involved in their attempts to corner the drug market.

For the most part, the acting is poor.  The actresses playing the members of the Squad are naturalistic and likable when they’re just lying around and gently giving each other a hard time but the minute they have to start shooting or talking tough, everyone starts trying too hard to act as if they’re in an early Tarantino film and the whole thing just feels awkward.  As Frosty, Shawnee Brittan is convincingly evil and some of the actors playing his toothless henchmen are properly creepy.  Otherwise, one would be better served by rewatching Spring Breakers.