I watched River’s Edge, a 1986 dark teen drama, and really liked it a lot. It starred Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover, and Ione Skye as teens whose friend kills his girlfriend, and they are shook up and don’t know how to handle it. It also had Joshua Miller as Reeves’ delinquent brother and Dennis Hopper as the town recluse who had done a similar crime in his past.
The film had a strong heavy metal vibe, between the music, the beat-up denim outfits, and the working-class kids from wayward homes who were basically taking care of themselves. It had this rough edge that I liked, and a lot of fantastic, heartfelt performances. Reeves brought a lot of quiet sensitivity to his role, while Skye had this sweet innocence despite being kind of wild, she just came off as a little lost. Hopper brought a lot of tragic sadness to his role, and Miller was great as a little shitty kid with no direction in life other than towards destruction. And Daniel Roebuck as the teen killer did great in frustrating me with his misogyny and self-justifications for killing his girlfriend because she was “talking shit,” and especially disturbing in how he said after he killed her, he felt so alive.
Glover brought a lot of tight-coiled energy to his character, and delivered a strange high inflection to his lines, combined with a California dude accent, it often just sounded off-kilter to me in comparison to the other teens’ more lowkey vibe.
The whole film just felt heavy and sad, especially as the teens just dig themselves in deeper and unknowingly become accomplices in the crime while sorting out their feelings. The whole story just comes off as tragic, and the film had a lot of heart that I respected.
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