Z/Web

Interesting film that didn’t seem at all controversial to me; I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. The film has a low-key plot: a group of teens go to pull a mean prank on a jerk for revenge, but things don’t go as planned and the kid dies, leaving the survivors to face their guilt. What makes the film work is the realistic teen dialog, terrific performances from a young cast, an appressive atmosphere of doom throughout, and the way the script incorporates and demonstrates interaction between three age groups of kids (remember, for teens and pre-teens, just a couple years is like a decade, so even slight differences in age puts people in different groups). Unfortunately, the whole of the film didn’t quite live up to the sum of its parts for me. I was left a little empty, wanting more and not getting it. The film really needed an extra twist at the end, something to hammer home a moral or modify the simple story we’d already seen. It’s still a solid story and good movie, but it just misses being great by a hair. I also found the guilt by the main group to be a little unrealistic. For some of the characters it makes a lot of sense (they are sensitive and guilt is natural), but for the older brother, for instance, I thought it was overdone. That’s in part because the death is partially accidental (one could argue almost completely accidental), so all the guilt is questionable. However, the reality is that these kids were feeling guilty before anything happened — they were feeling guilty about what they were going to do. Unfortunately the audience doesn’t feel that as much as the guilt later one, making the latter guilt have more importance than it should. Overall, an interesting film, but it doesn’t break new ground in teen behavior or anything. If the kids hadn’t shown any guilt — like in — that would be more significant. That these kids are actually repentent is what’s remarkable.