david-3165 As far as gay themed movies go, for the most part this is a beautiful and endearing love story handled with tenderness and all together quite amazingly done. The two leads are fantastic, the pacing, script, music and photography is outstanding. It has a rather American Beauty feel about it. About half way through it is obvious Nathan is hiding a torrid secret which could have been explored further, tackling a great social issue. This movie could have could have taken this theme and launched into being one of the best gay films of the decade. BUT, then it takes a predictable, boring and lazy path which made me VERY angry. I guess you see it coming but why oh why do so many American gay themed films have to kill off the innocent gay kid in a traumatic and horrid way. Is this some kind of recompense to get the film made? Financed? Some kind of self loathing from a writer director who needs to justify making a gay themed filmed? I am so bloody angry that this has once again occurred when blind Freddy could have taken the last 20 minutes and helped Nathan out of his shitty life and into love and light. But no, he has to be raped and beaten to death. What does this achieve for gods sake? I am very bloody angry about this.

hsture There are so many things wrong with this film it is hard to know where to begin, but I shall start with the poor excuse for a script, at first it was difficult to decide whether it was the acting that was bad or the script, and then after about half an hour I realised it was both. Persevering in the hope that it would improve, I proceeded to waste another hour watching this poor excuse for a film, the sad part is it had the potential to be good, if only the script had done something other than hint at the issues it was attempting to deal with, barely scratching the surface of what in reality is a very serious issue. The awkward acting (Stephen Bender) portraying an awkward, and mostly cringe worthy portrayal of a teen struggling with not only his sexuality but his horrendous home life, to be fair it isn't his fault though, the weak writing left him little to work with, and very little dialogue, other then the odd feeble response to a question, and fain glance here and there at his co-stars there really was not a lot he could do. The depth of characters were about as deep as that which you would find in an episode of the hills, by the end of the film, other than the shoddy, and sloppy scene depicting his father attempting to abuse him we knew nothing about these characters as individuals, much less how they came to have such an 'intense' relationship, how they went from riding the school bus with each other to pulling each others clothes off in a grave yard is a mystery I think even Sherlock himself would struggle to fathom, yet we were supposed to believe in this relationship and it's struggles and somehow the emotional turmoil he was going through at the same time. To say the ending was a disaster would be an understatement, four boys on a camping trip, find a scary old house...all seems pretty cliché right? but to add in a rape scene for shock value seemed, vulgar, pathetic and illustrated just how poor the writing of this movie was, the fact that once he was dead his eyes moved several times as his co star was supposed to be sat mourning his loss was almost laughable. My review may seem harsh but I think if you are going to make a movie about something on this subject, and do it so poorly, you are opening yourself up to criticism. The writers were obviously trying to build themselves up as your typical quirky, indie film, edgy and mysterious, the only mystery in the end being how the hell it got made in the first place. Weak, poorly written and poorly executed, an insult to those who have actually gone through anything like this.

sandover The South and cinema, ah! Will there ever be a true collaboration between the two? It certainly is sure that something that has to do with the Gothic element, or stern, colorful zealotry, will remain impossible to sublimate into images. Anyway, I prefer Flannery O'Connor, when it comes to such matters.But that is enough proemium. Let's turn now to the true matter: would Flannery O'Connor prefer this film? Just kiddin'.I read some of the other comments. What stroke me was the elaborate analysis on psychoanalytic terms of passivity and aggression and what you will happening somewhere at the film. And I admit right away that I am of the psychoanalytic, especially lacanian persuasion. I would call that my true persuasion. The problem with this, though, is that it will never, never tell you if a film is good or bad, because it is an analytic discourse that avoids evaluations. For evaluations and appreciations I turn elsewhere, say Oscar Wilde, or Harold Bloom.And, dear me, have they told me this film is bad. It is, like the french say of hell, paved with good intentions. And it fails miserably on almost every level. There is no chemistry between the boys (watch how they always fail to engage their kisses, but when Roy kisses - and just once - the girl, the straight element of the actor, to put it that way, seeps through). There is no plausibility in genre-shifting: from maybe adolescent love story, coming out story, perhaps parental abuse story or even maybe religious bashing story coming and brainstorming us early on the film we pass to awkward sexual discovery lamely interconnected with sexual harassment from parent story and at the third act a gruesome, dismaying horror/fantasy element thrown in and allegedly remains unresolved. Ha! When all such stories need a proper mood for anything in them to happen, and when we have in the film no mood at all, just amateurish, half-engaged and ill-conceived stabs at it, tell me where you think it will head to.Too bad, because it has Maximillian Roeg in it, who has something of his mother's, Theresa Russell, off-kilter beauty. But the boy is obviously inexperienced, and the lack of suggestive or guiding direction wasted his presence.Once more, to share Oscar Wilde's splendid aphorism: All bad poetry is sincere.A quite sincere film...

holden_dog I found this first half of the movie to be alright. There isn't a lot of talking and the small amount where someone does pipe up is hardly profound, this coupled with the worst music selections EVER! The lack of talking would have been better if the acting was better, I just found the acting to be incredibly awkward.The second half of the movie left me thinking to myself, 'What just happened?' But not in a good way. The supernatural vibe at the end came out of no where, and the move between the dream world and real world plus the flashbacks was just too much. I was highly bemused by the whole movie. I understand this was a book so maybe taking something out of the book and turning it into a narration wouldn't have gone astray.