Knives and Skin

Band girl Carolyn Harper is out with football jock Andy Kitzmiller late at night. They have a fight. Andy abandons her at the water's edge. She goes missing. Everybody in town is affected.

Writer/director Jennifer Reeder is drawing a lot from Twin Peaks in both content and stylistically. I don't know much about her other than she is apparently a David Lynch fan. This movie is full of Lynchian touches. The dead girl trope is common enough, but it is all the little things that are pointing to Lynch. This isn't quite Twin Peaks which is centered on the cop investigating the case. This indie is more centered on the kids. I thought the Harper mother would advance the investigation. I did not expect her going this way, but sexual perversity is also Lynchian. This is not copying, but it is fandom filmmaking.

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It had so many underlying themes/issues wrapped around the mystery of a missing teen. The story touches on family dynamics, coming of age, and the choices characters make. For me it was a combination Twin Peaks/American Beauty/Donnie Darko, but also refreshingly new at the same time. The Lynchian inspiration is obvious in many scenes. The use of the 1980s soundtrack was perfection, transporting you back to an earlier time, but while remaining very present. It may not be for everyone, but I think it's definitely worth a watch.

Alternative title would be: The only ones who smoked better stuff than the writer of this movie are the ones who voted for it to win any awards.

We held out hope that there was going to be some redeemable quality to this flick, but there is none.

This movie reminds me of a visit to the modern art display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art a long time ago. I spent a couple hours looking and laughing and thinking "I could have made these exhibits in just a few minutes!" The same could be said of this movie- "I could have written it in about ten minutes." Kids could have put together this random mess in a short amount of time (although they would have probably skipped most of the sexual content- and that wouldn't have changed the movie at all- for better or worse.

Coming of age movie? Slice of life? Honestly I have no idea how to classify this movie, it begins with a missing girl and then it ends at some point. The story feels like a bunch of random scenes tied together somehow and sometimes they involve the missing teenager. It was all very disjointed, surreal and confusing... And I couldn't look away.

It helps that the movie is incredibly well shot, everything from the scene composition, to the lighting, to the costumes and the scenery is pure eye candy. Even the scenes that are supposed to make you so uncomfortable you want to look away, you simply can't because of how beautiful the scene is. All elevated by some incredible music, both the choir covers of popular hits and the original soundtrack add so much to the film. It also helps that the performances are stellar from the entire cast.

This movie isn't for everyone, it's weird, but I really enjoyed it.

Indeed this movie "felt" like "Donnie Darko meets Twin Peaks for me. It's a very unique film and if you dig deep you'll see it's composed of consistent metaphors. If you want to see something unlike anything you've seen, this film definitely fits the bill.