River’s Edge (1987)

Directed by Tim Hunter. Starring Crispin Glover, Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, Dennis Hopper, Daniel Roebuck, Joshua John Miller, Josh Richman, Roxana Zal, Constance Forslund, Jim Metzler, Leo Rossi, Phillip Brock, Tom Bower, Taylor Negron. [R]

Unsettling but all-too-believable drama exploring the bored alienation of teenagers in a small town, and the way they react to the news that one of their own (Roebuck) killed his girlfriend and left the body on a riverbank. The characters are anything but an amorphous blob—one is troubled but reticent, one is paranoid, one is disaffected, etc.—but their values and basic humanity are all damaged to some degree, and the fact that the filmmakers never try to place blame or offer explanations is as refreshing as it is horrifying, much like the film itself. Fiction based on truth (inspired by a real-life murder in Santa Clara County), unfiltered and never striving for effect. Early film roles for many of its cast members, including Skye, who makes her acting debut; Hopper has a memorable turn as an ex-biker from the counterculture era who can’t relate to these troubled kids (but has plenty of disturbing issues of his own). Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival the year before its release.

86/100