Ladymol's Review

You sometimes have to wonder if the anti-Americanism in some parts of the world isn’t fuelled by films like this. I’m not saying that America is all like this, or all young Americans behave like this, but that this film was actually made amazes me. Surely, someone—writer, producer, director, actor—might have had a moment of clarity and said: whoa, stop, this just needs NOT to be made.

Young rich Americans who seem to have no purpose in life but to take drugs and have sex with each other decide to murder one of their friends. Ostensibly, he has been “bullying” his friend, but this abusive relationship didn’t seem credible to me. So, the teenagers gang together and brutally murder this boy. There is no gay interest at all, unless you see the bullying as repressed homosexuality. I’m not surprised the director slipped in some homophobia; he must be a pretty unpleasant guy to make this movie.

Not much else to say really. I can’t imagine who would want to watch this.

Cerisaye's Review

This is one of the worst films I have ever seen.  I don’t know how to begin to write a review.  It’s sickening and deeply disturbing.  I don’t understand what the filmmaker was trying to say.  Any serious point he might have made is undone by gross sensationalism and totally gratuitous sex and nudity throughout.  It’s like a paedophile’s wet dream, lingering shots of nubile young flesh, male and female, complete with crotch shots and more naked breasts than I’ve ever seen in an American film outside porno. 

The story, based on a book, is apparently true, though aspects were changed for dramatic purposes.  It’s supposedly a warning to parents of teenagers what their kids could be getting up to while we’re trying to be their friends not authority figures.  Well, I have three teenagers, they have lots of friends and none of them remotely like those in this film. 

It’s set in affluent Florida, all beautiful homes and fancy cars.  None of the kids goes to school or has to work; they just hang out.  They’re all taking drugs and having lots of sex.  Two of them, Marty & Bobby, have been best friends since childhood, but it’s a master-slave kind of relationship.  Bobby bullies Marty, makes him do things he doesn’t want to and abuses him.  The relationship is so intense it’s possibly more than friendship, and Bobby’s violence against Marty externalised homophobia, but it’s insufficiently developed.  Bobby gets Marty to strip in a gay bar and work for a gay chatline.  But it’s such a disgusting film I don’t want it put down to repressed homosexuality.

The young actors, including Nick Stahl and Michael Pitt, are convincing in their roles.  That’s the only positive thing I’m prepared to say.  The plot is simple enough.  Marty’s girlfriend Lisa is so jealous of Bobby’s relationship with Marty she conceives the idea of killing him.  For some reason he agrees, and their group of friends gets roped in to help.  They’re not too smart either as they openly brag about it around town.  And they do, in one of the most sickening scenes in my experience, leaving nothing to the imagination.  I couldn’t believe it when we’re then shown Marty & Lisa having sex while they talk about the gruesome killing.  Totally uncalled for and very misjudged.  Added nothing to the characters, indeed contradicted everything that followed, purely for titillation.

Then of course it all falls apart.  Presumably the point being they didn’t have any concept that what they were doing was real and not video game violence.  One of the girls, but not the one who says ‘Hey, let’s kill Bobby’, seems to have a history of sexual abuse, including rape, and another was brought up by a mother who saw her father kill her mother.  That’s the backstory.

But you know what?  I don’t want to think about this appalling film any more, so I’m not going to.  I highly recommend you don’t watch it.  Believe me you’re doing yourself a big favour.