River's Edge (1986)

Strong and Moving!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I didn't know this movie was based on a true events when I first saw this film. But now knowing that it is based on a true events adds to the value of it. Because even if it isn't based on a true event, it's still one of those shocking suburban movies dealing with teens inner-self and rebellion. The story is basically about a dead body and couple of teens that witnessed a dead body. And the thing is they know the murderer because he went around bragging about it. But took quite a while before someone reported the murder. Now again I saw this film without knowing it's based on a true story, but if you do watch this while knowing it's based on a true story it might add to the shock factor of it all. This sort of made me think about the human conscience and unstable people out there. Now this film will probably known for having Keanu Reeves when he was at his peak when it comes to his looks. But the show stealer is Crispin Glover, who is the most memorable character in this film and his freakouts are just so darn humorous. Yeah, I kinda feel bad about adding the word humorous for a movie like this, especially when it's based on a true event. But he does add a bit of humor to this movie as this over obsessive guy that spas out occasionally with motives and intentions that is so darn awkward. Or just doesn't make much sense. Any fan of Crispin Glover should check this film out. It's a shocking and engrossing film about teens with disillusioned thoughts and warped conscience. There is also one of the most annoying 12yr old kid character in this.8/10

I don't entirely know what to make of this film. On the one hand, I can see that it's an examination of teen apathy, social ambivalence and post-familial-dysfunction angst etc etc but it's also really rather silly in terms of improbable plot and ridiculous unlikely overblown characters, but apparently it's based on a true story so perhaps not. One young man (John - Daniel Roebuck) kills his girlfriend without emotion or regret, he is psychopathic, just intent on causing mayhem for no apparent reason an plays detached, dangerous and scary brilliantly. He is seen by a twelve year old boy, Tim, and both of them brag about the killing, and knowing where the body is. There are shades of Stand by Me, a coming of age journey in the film - the characters learn about themselves through the experience of seeing the body and also the viewer is narrated to via speeches by both the school teacher and Matt, to explain the troubles witnessed in the film. The acting is in part dreadful and brilliant, and with Crispin Glover's performance as Layne I'm not sure whether he was bad or brilliant; he plays one of the friends who is desperate to be part of the group - the leader - and tries to hold them all together, afraid of being on his own, but overplayed in a character so apart from his friends, addled, druggie, like he's method acting a caricature of a stoner drop-out teen, and just flailing around in exaggerated gestures. Joshua Miller, as the twelve year old Tim, younger brother of Reeves' Matt, is cartoonish, androgynous and even camp, and he is performing acting by numbers. The film reminds me in places of Lost Boys but at least that had the guts to say "Hey! This IS a comedy!" but River's Edge is stuck with trying really hard to be a drama and I'm not sure it works without the comedy that some of the hammy acting, and silly one-liners, Dennis Hopper's character Feck with his inflatable girlfriend and general silliness adds but detracts from the horror of the story. Dennis Hopper was amazing, hardly surprising, in his delivery and was one of the actors that stood out and above the rest as "real" rather than "acting." Keanu's Matt is the quiet, relatable, real character and he plays son of dysfunctional family, school drop-out, even father and dominant male figure in places to his sister and mother, and demonstrates the complex and above-age roles that some young people have to play behind the scenes - they are labelled as "difficult" but there's more to them. Perhaps the same with Crispin's Layne; he looks like a waste of space and an unphlegmatic idiot; but he stands up to the situation and standing by John (Roebuck). Hopper's schizophrenic-type delusion are brilliant. For me, however, Reeves stands out, his gentle delivery and subtleness perfect for the troubled and nervous Matt, against Ione Skye's Clarissa he is shy and easily led, she seems to deal with the death of her friend by throwing herself at Matt - well, who can blame her really? - 22yo Reeves was stunning and appeared like a different creature compared to everyone else's look. He, Hopper and Roebuck stood out as the actors that blended into the screenplay, their character's environment and the plot whereas the other's stuck out as trying to do that.It's a good film. You can take it as a dark comedy or you can read more into it. I'm not sure whether you should read into this, or whether it is just what it is but as 80s films go it's a bit deeper and less fluffy than most of them, and surprised me with how watchable it is and how it is still relatable and up to date.

I've seen this movie several times, and every time I see it I'm amazed anew at how wonderfully, bizarrely nihilistic it is. It's a disturbing little piece of cinema -- how many movies actually make you want to punch out a 12-year-old character? -- but amazing nonetheless.Based on the true story of a teenager in Milpitas, CA, who killed his girlfriend and brought his friends to view her body, "River's Edge" records a few days activity among a group of disaffected kids, and how their lives are interrupted when one of their buddies murders his girlfriend and--essentially--dares them to turn him in. Woven into the narrative is an unblinking, flat-eyed look at the inner lives of people who really don't care what happens around them.Samson (Daniel Roebuck) strangles his girlfriend, Jamie, and leaves her naked body on the river bank. The opening of the film shows him drinking beer and howling at the sky in the early morning mist, apparently exhilarated by his accomplishment; he is viewed through the eyes of Tim (Joshua Miller), who has ridden his bike to the bridge to throw his younger sister's doll into the river. Tim is a piece of work. Because of his youth (he is 12) and his crappy home life (he lives with his constantly quarreling mother and stepfather) you want to feel sorry for him but the movie posits him as such a nasty little jerk that you find yourself wishing someone would throw HIM off the bridge.For the rest of the movie, Samson's friends will react by varying degrees to the murder as he shows them the body and explains -- in a way curiously devoid of inflection -- that he killed her because she was "talking sh*t" about his mother (thus setting up one of my favorite conversations in the whole movie, between a frenetic Layne (Crispin Glover) and his concerned girlfriend, Clarissa (Ione Skye) -- when Clarissa says "What, he kills Jamie and we just pretend it never happened?" Layne snaps back "He HAD his REASONS!").The reactions of the friends form the core of the movie -- why don't they care? Why, when they are shown their friend and classmate lying naked and rapidly purpling on the riverbank, do they not immediately run to the police? Why do they spend two days driving around town, scoring weed from the local crazy drug dealer, Feck (psychotically essayed by Dennis Hopper) and having sex in a local park while they discuss what they ought to do? Wouldn't any sane person's reaction be to call the authorities and turn Samson in? Well, wouldn't it? Along with Tim the evil 12-year-old, Crispin Glover's Layne seems to be the embodiment of the problem. Jittery in a way that will make anyone who has ever used amphetamines wish they didn't know exactly how he feels, skittering along a path laid by a seriously skewed moral compass, Layne is convinced that true friendship can only be expressed by helping Samson escape prosecution for the murder of their friend. Accordingly, he lectures the group about how they must all stick together and show the world that they are a team. You'd think he was exhorting soldiers for a last push into enemy territory, rather than attempting to force a bunch of stoned, confused, apathetic kids to protect a possibly-sociopathic acquaintance.Adult influence is represented by Dennis Hopper's Feck, who likes to remind people that he once killed a woman and "They are still after me!" Feck, a one-legged fugitive biker, lives in a ramshackle house full of motorcycle parts and marijuana. His only companion is a blow-up doll named Ellie; he dresses her and dances with her and treats her with gentle solicitude. Only Dennis Hopper could make you wonder if Feck even knows Ellie is a doll; at one point he tells Samson, "She's a doll. I know she's a doll."--but, being Dennis Hopper, he delivers this final proof of his sanity just before drawing a gun and shooting Samson in the head. Ultimately, the viewer decides it doesn't matter because Feck is fascinating either way.Keanu Reeves, as Tim's older brother Matt, is...Keanu Reeves. He's playing the same slightly confused, not-quite-bright teenage stoner that he always played before he landed "The Matrix", but you can believe he'd be the only one with enough conscience to turn Samson in to the local police -- just as you can believe he'd be righteously indignant when the interviewing detective suggests he might have something to do with the murder (another fabulous line: "What was your relationship to this girl, anyway? Did you love her, did you hate her, did you f**k her when you got bored? WHAT?") The murderous Samson is portrayed with dead-eyed perfection by Daniel Roebuck as a kid who seems to have decided very early on that since we're all going to die anyway, it doesn't really matter what we do while we're here. His soliloquy about how incredibly alive he felt after murdering Jamie is bone-chilling, as is his rapidly escalating antisocial behavior; he goes from quietly acceding to anything Layne asks (at the beginning of the film) to angrily pulling a gun on a convenience store clerk toward the end (while Feck, clutching Ellie in the aisle of the store, asks, sweetly, "Do you have Bud in bottles?") You get the distinct feeling that, left to his own devices, Samson would have a body count pretty fast.The message of the movie is that there is no message. It plays as a documentary, almost, and simply presents the event and the subsequent confusion of the kids as something that happened once. I think that's why the movie works so well. It doesn't have any message, it just has a story, and the story will stick with you forever.

Spoiler: My ex-girlfriend of ages ago said this had happened at her high school, Pioneer High, in San Jose, CA. Though she didn't get one of the tours of the corpse, she heard about it at the time and when it was made into a movie, of course, she made me watch the movie. I'd have to say, it's a creepy film - actually not the film's fault - the idea of giving tours of a crime scene is creepy and that's ironically what really happened. Still, there's something about that era that I find captivating and that all these kids who saw the corpse pretty much kept it to themselves, maybe saying "that's cool" and moving on. So odd that so many should have seen it and said nothing about it to the authorities. Like some kind of freak show attraction that nobody questions or feels guilty about viewing, like there's nothing morally wrong about it at all. I find it fascinating and yet sad that society at some point can break like this. Like as if you were in the midst of a drunken riot stampede and came upon a corpse or two that had been trampled upon but ran right over it anyway without a second thought because so many others before you already had. As if to say, all those people can't be wrong... and yet they are/were. Really great movie. Sad that it actually happened but maybe we can learn by the mistakes of others and not let morals slide aside just because a certain number before us already did.