This shocking pre-teen drama manages, through realistic performances and a sense of empathy, to avoid exploitation and instead deliver something honest and haunting.
This shocking pre-teen drama manages, through realistic performances and a sense of empathy, to avoid exploitation and instead deliver something honest and haunting.
A trio of troubled suburbanites attempts to come to grips with the personal issues that surface following the tragic death of one of their own in this introspective adolescent drama from L.I.E. screenwriter/director (Michael Cuesta). In the months following the death of Jacob's (Conor Donovan) likeable, athletic twin brother, Rudy (also Donovan), Jacob and friends Malee (Zoe Weizenbaum) and Leonard (Jesse Camacho) struggle to make sense of the unfortunate youth's fiery demise at the hands of
local bullies. As Jacob quickly loses himself to revenge fantasies and sets into motion a series of destructive plans designed to destroy the kids responsible for his brother's death, Malee focuses her attention on a dejected patient of her psychotherapist mother, and obese Leonard struggles about weight and health issues with his equally obese mother. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
The film careens from crisis to crisis. Yet each time it threatens to spin out of control, [director Michael] Cuesta demonstrates a firm hand that keeps us leaning in with interest.
The stories coexist without intersecting, and the film would benefit from a stronger narrative spine, but bringing together three such gifted young actors in a single film is a minor miracle.
[An] intelligent and edgy story that allows believable characters and their interpersonal dynamics to come alive as sinister undercurrents ripple below.
It doesn't sound like a barrel of laughs, but [director Michael] Cuesta finds wry humour in tragic situations while at the same time thickening the air with quiet foreboding.
A refracted glimpse of American suburbia through the eyes of three pre-teens grappling with grief, reprisal and loneliness, the film boasts some great adolescent performances but can't overcome a rigidly partitioned structure and tonal inconsistency.
Though occasionally clumsy, it manages to accurately re-create the especial lonely pain of nascent pubescence, the shock of change and the feeling that no one has ever lived through the sort of emotional weather you're required to endure.
The children are operating without a safety net or a script typed with kid gloves, and that makes it all the more easy to fear for and sympathize with them, even as the plot takes outlandish twists.
From the parents to the children, the cast is uniformly excellent. Weizenbaum and Renner deserve special mention for handling a potentially unsettling relationship with care.
Quiet different and unique, at least compared to most of what I've seen in the past 5 years. If only the ending had been better than what it is, I might have given it 4.5 or even 5/5 as well. Having said that, I still find it highly commendable.
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