Being a conventional guy with teen years from the conformist 1950's, the movie was hard for me to engage with, particularly with Glover's showy over-acting. Anyway, here are a few of my impressions.
Looks like a main problem for the movie's youth was marijuana dependency that helped disengage them from broader social values other than approval from their equally dependent peers. So when John murders Jamie leaving her nude body to bake by river's edge, his peers laugh it off, apparently as just something John does. Contrast that indifference with the little girl's (I missed her name) heartfelt memorial to her beloved murdered doll. Looks like she already knows the kind of life awaiting within her family grouping. So, based on the selfless love shown her doll, maybe there's some hope of potential resistance to the peer group after all. Then too, Matt and Clarissa's budding romance may also establish a life-affirming bond propelling them beyond their former peer-narrowed bounds. Nonetheless, the movie only suggests but doesn't confirm these budding gestures of hope. Also combining against hope is a generational link between demonic little Tim and aging murderer Zeck who's also a pot seller. The connection suggests that the no-values dependency in fact crosses generations. Tellingly, however, the flick still draws no steadfast conclusions in these regards, or, in fact, any regards.
Now when I was a kid, we sat through the anti-pot scare flick Reefer Madness (1936), that equated pot use with murderous madness. Over time, that theme disproved itself, pot being more a relaxant than a hyper-stimulant. Here, however, pot appears more as part of a behavioral pattern that removes users from engaging in social values, which, in turn, helps them escape an ugly broader societal reality they don't want to join. It's an open question I think whether the movie should have dealt with the prevailing culture more openly than it does. That way we would have a clearer idea of what the peer group was reacting against. But then that would have shifted focus away from the self-defeating nihilism of the group onto what mght be causing it, important as this latter might be.
Anyway, it's an oddball flick in my little frame of reference, too chaotic to be entertaining, but upon some thought, too suggestive to lack depth. So I'll soon give it another look-see if I can just get past the distractive Glover.
Looks like a main problem for the movie's youth was marijuana dependency that helped disengage them from broader social values other than approval from their equally dependent peers. So when John murders Jamie leaving her nude body to bake by river's edge, his peers laugh it off, apparently as just something John does. Contrast that indifference with the little girl's (I missed her name) heartfelt memorial to her beloved murdered doll. Looks like she already knows the kind of life awaiting within her family grouping. So, based on the selfless love shown her doll, maybe there's some hope of potential resistance to the peer group after all. Then too, Matt and Clarissa's budding romance may also establish a life-affirming bond propelling them beyond their former peer-narrowed bounds. Nonetheless, the movie only suggests but doesn't confirm these budding gestures of hope. Also combining against hope is a generational link between demonic little Tim and aging murderer Zeck who's also a pot seller. The connection suggests that the no-values dependency in fact crosses generations. Tellingly, however, the flick still draws no steadfast conclusions in these regards, or, in fact, any regards.
Now when I was a kid, we sat through the anti-pot scare flick Reefer Madness (1936), that equated pot use with murderous madness. Over time, that theme disproved itself, pot being more a relaxant than a hyper-stimulant. Here, however, pot appears more as part of a behavioral pattern that removes users from engaging in social values, which, in turn, helps them escape an ugly broader societal reality they don't want to join. It's an open question I think whether the movie should have dealt with the prevailing culture more openly than it does. That way we would have a clearer idea of what the peer group was reacting against. But then that would have shifted focus away from the self-defeating nihilism of the group onto what mght be causing it, important as this latter might be.
Anyway, it's an oddball flick in my little frame of reference, too chaotic to be entertaining, but upon some thought, too suggestive to lack depth. So I'll soon give it another look-see if I can just get past the distractive Glover.