Innocence shattered in the sun"Mean Creek" is a "Deliverance" with teenagers.
A pair of puppy dog-like teenagers are talking about their obnoxious, oversized schoolmate - a bully who had recently knocked one of them around, bloodying his face. The girl, Millie (Carly Schroeder), looks over at her friend, the shy, jittery Sam (Rory Culkin), and asks, "If you could snap your fingers right now and he would drop dead in his tracks, would you do it?" It takes more than a snap of the fingers for something bad to happen to "fat freak" George (Josh Peck) in the disturbing Mean Creek, but not that much; writer-director Jacob Estes' feature debut shows just how quickly innocence can be erased, and where the lines between accident and intent, revenge fantasies and the reality of violence, intersect.
A pair of puppy dog-like teenagers are talking about their obnoxious, oversized schoolmate - a bully who had recently knocked one of them around, bloodying his face. The girl, Millie (Carly Schroeder), looks over at her friend, the shy, jittery Sam (Rory Culkin), and asks, "If you could snap your fingers right now and he would drop dead in his tracks, would you do it?"
It takes more than a snap of the fingers for something bad to happen to "fat freak" George (Josh Peck) in the disturbing Mean Creek, but not that much; writer-director Jacob Estes' feature debut shows just how quickly innocence can be erased, and where the lines between accident and intent, revenge fantasies and the reality of violence, intersect.
Mean Creek joins an odd little mini-genre of pictures: River's Edge, Tim Hunter's 1986 tale of adolescent alienation and a corpse by the riverbank; that same year's kinder, gentler Rob Reiner adaptation of a Stephen King story, Stand By Me; and Larry Clark's creepily voyeuristic 2001 release, Bully, inspired by real events, to name a memorable few. (John Boorman's Deliverance also comes to mind: Mean Creek is the pip-squeak version, but just as troubling.)
Shot almost entirely with hand-held cameras - and using a character's video camera as a key narrative device - Mean Creek has a jumpy, reality-TV kind of feel that adds to the story's sense of unsettling authenticity.
The young cast, anchored by the little, watchful Culkin and the extraordinarily good Schroeder, is unencumbered by self-consciousness. There are no signs of actorly technique, no overreaching - the emotions come naturally, from events that unfold.
Those events begin as a prank, as Sam's protective older brother, Rocky (Trevor Morgan), and his friend Marty (Scott Mechlowicz) hatch a scheme to lure the bullying George on an excursion down the river. The plan: to humiliate the guy, make him strip naked, jump in the water, and find his way home, alone.
"It's a beautiful day for a boat trip with some buddies," chimes George early on, grinning like a loon, as the six kids (the thin, soft-spoken Clyde, played by Ryan Kelley, rounds out the group) paddle downstream. Indeed, it is. Estes filmed along a couple of bucolic waterways in Oregon and Washington, and the sun-dappled foliage, the herons wading and taking flight, the gurgle of water over stone, all radiate deceptive, seductive, beautiful calm.
One of the most jolting moments in Mean Creek has nothing to do with George and the fate that awaits him; it involves a snail, sliding along a tree stump. The mindless motion of the natural world is suddenly, spitefully interrupted. Estes' dark sunlit tale cuts like a knife.
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Mean Creek
*** (out of four stars)
Produced by Rick Rosenthal, Susan Johnson and Hagai Shaham, written and directed by Jacob Estes, photography by Sharone Meir, music by tomandandy, distributed by Paramount Classics.
Running time: 1 hour, 27 mins.
Sam. . . Rory Culkin
Millie. . . Carly Schroeder
Marty. . . Scott Mechlowicz
Rocky. . . Trevor Morgan
George. . . Josh Peck
Parent's guide: R (violence, profanity, adult themes)
Playing at: Ritz East and Ritz Sixteen/NJ