River's Edge (1986)
Directed by Tim Hunter
A group of high-school friends must come to terms with the fact that one of them, Samson, killed another, Jamie. Faced with the brutality of death, each must decide whether to turn their friend in to the police, or to help him escape the consequences of his dreadful deed.
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What critics compared River's Edge to
Though it is clear from the start that something bad -- very bad -- is bound to happen here, and does, there is satisfaction in the film's defiantly unhappy anti-resolution that will appeal to the same quirky subset of people who appreciated the darkly depressing "River's Edge," "Kids" and "Bully."
"Mean Creek'' takes its place alongside "Stand by Me'' and "River's Edge'' as one of very few films to accurately portray the experience of growing up male.
If they were adults, in an action movie (or even teens in River's Edge, which Mean Creek resembles), Sam and Millie's dire circumstance might lead to the sort of desperate, ardent sex that happens in such movies.
Mean Creek slots itself nicely in that catalog of macabre coming-of-age stories like River’s Edge and Stand by Me by way of the existential panic of Deliverance.
The title Mean Creek is a kind of plainspoken, water-borne homage to ''River's Edge,'' a beloved and influential 1986 movie about adolescent moral choices.
At first blush, "Mean Creek," by first-time writer-director Jacob Estes, is a film in the tradition of "River's Edge" and "Stand by Me."
It’s also—as many critics have already pointed out —a spiritual descendant of Tim Hunter’s terrific 1986 drama River’s Edge, about a group of teenagers scarily unfazed—and even excited—by a murder committed by one of their classmates.
Here they reunite with cinematographer Eli Born and editor Ed Yonaitis for a story which consciously echoes the likes of River's Edge and Stand by Me in terms of plot, while also displaying thematic and stylistic debts to Donnie Darko and the small-town pictures of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg.
Super Dark Times is a coming of age picture that harkens back to the glory days of R-rated '80s teen movies like River’s Edge , slices of moody truth that contain a significant amount of darkness at their core.
Thirteen years before the Columbine High School massacre, Tim Hunter’s River’s Edge painted a chilling portrait of numb teenage ennui and the banality of baby-faced evil.
It’s a ’90s teen thriller that has hints of “Stand By Me” and “River’s Edge” about it.
Written and directed by Nick Cassavetes, and based on a sordid tale of abduction, murder and international flight involving the improbably named FBI most-wanted-listee Jesse James Hollywood, the film belongs in the same category as Bully, Mean Creek and River's Edge.
Campbell, whose excellent arc on “The Americans” looks in retrospect like a warm-up to this part, nails the role of a shy kid who hasn’t yet found his place in the world, while Brit thesp Heaton seems to channel River Phoenix in moments (the early films of Gus Van Sant feel like a key touchstone here, as does Tim Hunter’s “River’s Edge”) as the more extroverted but also emotionally tortured of the two.
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His decision to shoot on 16mm gives it a gritty yet dreamlike noir feel, reminiscent of 1986's River's Edge.
It’s reminiscent of Justin Kurzel’s Snowtown or Tim Hunter’s River’s Edge in how it drops viewers up to their eyeballs into a world of pure apathy, and the result is a film that makes it difficult to connect with.
That's the plot in a nutshell, familiar to anyone who's seen the superior River's Edge.
When the film doesn't � as in its aimless early scenes � it plays like an updating of the black comedy "River's Edge," with the same amount of irritating characters but none of the humor.
As a result, Clark undercuts whatever aspirations he may have had in attempting to make a movie of the level of Jonathan Kaplan's "Over the Edge" or Tim Hunter's "River's Edge," two classic studies of lethally disaffected suburban youth.
It's more like a porny and gruesomely didactic fusion of ''River's Edge,'' ''Lord of the Flies,'' and ''I Know What You Did Last Summer.''
His sophomore feature is a sharp, wickedly funny, and unexpectedly heartfelt homage (co-written by Joshua John Miller, that amazingly creepy child actor so memorable in Near Dark and River’s Edge).
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The film is reminiscent of the best parts of River’s Edge, Paranoid Park, and Wassup Rockers, as Porterfield and cinematographer Jeremy Saulnier focus on the vibe of their locations: a creek where the kids gather to swim, a retirement home where the deceased’s grandmother watches Reba, a library where a little girl listens to a reading of Sylvester And The Magic Pebble, and so on.
It's also a believable teen story reminiscent of classic youth movies like River's Edge and Elephant.