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Touches You

Too much of everything

Nice effects though.

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

The premise is promising, but things go wrong pretty much straight away with a lot of dubious and bad acting and even more dubious and bad dialogues. I mean, who really thought for a minute you could get away with a character like Layne is played by Crispin Glover? Maybe if you had a comedy in mind... But even the performance of Dennis Hopper is none too convincing.What I díd like was the setting of the '80s smalltown (inlcuding all kinds of smaller or bigger accessories), the metal music of Slayer, Hallows Eve and Fates Warning and the theme of 'modern day' indifference vs. giving a sh*t, but that will never be good enough when you come across such flaws before-mentioned.5 out of 10.

River's Edge is one of the best Teen films ever made and also one of the darkest Teen films ever made. Filled with terrific direction,great performances,a wonderful screenplay and a dark,unforgettable soundtrack,River's Edge is an Underrated classic that you won't forget.Set in California and Based on the true story of the 1981 murder of Marcy Renee Conrad who was murdered by boyfriend Jacques Broussard,River's Edge tells the story of teenager Samson 'John' Tollet(Daniek Roebeck)who murders his girlfriend Jamie(Danyl Deats). When John goes to school and tells his friends he killed his girlfriend,his friends don't believe John until he shows them the dead body. Realizing the danger,John's friend Layne(Crispin Glover)wants to protect him and leaves John under the watch of Local drug dealer Feck(Dennis Hopper)while John's other friends Matt(Keanu Reeves)and Clarissa(Ione Skye Leitch)are conflicted:turn John in or be conflicted about it.Released in 1986/87,River's Edge was a great film because it was different from other Teen films at the time because it was not a John Hughes film or a Brat Pack film,but a dark Teen film that stands right next to Heathers as the darkest,Nihilistic Teen film of the 1980s that paved the way for films like Alpha Dog,Bully and Mean Creek. River's Edge is a powerful film that right from the start gives viewers a world that is bleak and filled with sadness and hopelessness and where you feel like the Teen characters have no future and will have nothing going for them and the only things that the teens can do is get stoned or drunk and have no emotion where the characters home life and town are broken and very downbeat. The teens in this film are not interested in going to the prom or getting a date but are focused and interested in doing nothing with their lives. What is shocking and disturbing about River's Edge isn't the murder itself(which is horrible)but how the characters react and feel about the murder. When the murder happens each character has a different feeling about it. Layne wants to protect John at any and all costs despite John murdering Jamie,John doesn't care about himself or the murder,Matt and Clarissa are conflicted and Feck cannot understand why John is so uncaring. Throughout the film there is a dark feeling of apathy and carelessness because despite Jamie being murdered the film's main characters act like the murder never happened or Jamie never existed or that the kids are too dazed and confused to care. You can say that RE is a Horror film in some ways not just because of the murder and dread surrounding the film but a Horror film about feelings and human emotions in society and how we as people deal with the harshness and darkness of most human beings. This film is a dark and grim study of human nature and apathy and how we as humans deal with things in life and you can say is true to the term "disaffected youth" because the teens don't know how to feel or react to the situation. What I also love about the film is the movie's offbeat and dark Humor which is thanks to the characters Lanye and Feck with Lanye trying to protect John at all costs and saying funny dialog and Feck whether it's scenes when he's dealing drugs to the kids and saying funny dialog,watching John or having conversations with his plastic sex doll Ellie. While the film is a drama River's Edge has a quirky sense of Humor. The screenplay by Neal Jimenez is excellent with Jimenez giving the film and the main characters well-written dialog as well as great depth and personality. Jimenez says the characters were based on friends that he knew and I really believe him because the characters feel real and truthful and the dialog doesn't feel forced but natural and honest. The ending of the film is excellent because of it's ambiguous nature and how it makes viewers asks questions rather than easily answering them for us and it's one of the things that makes River's edge a great film.The whole cast does great in their roles. Crispin Glover is brilliant,funny and over the top as Layne,the one who wants to protect John. Keanu Reeves is wonderful as Matt,with Reeves bringing depth to the role. Ione Skye Leitch is fantastic as Clarissa,Matt's love interest. Daniel Roebuck is great and bone-chilling as John,the killer of the film. Dennis Hopper is amazing,funny and over the top as Feck,a local drug dealer,with Hopper making Feck the most sympathetic character in the film. Joshua Miller is disturbing and memorable as Tim,Matt's little brother. Tom Bowler(Bennett),Jim Metzler(Mr. Burkewaite),Leo Rossi(Jim),Roxanna Zal(Maggie),Josh Richman(Tony),Phillip Brock(Mike),Constance Forslund(Madeleine),Taylor Negron(Checker) and Tammy Smith(Kim)give good performances as well.The direction by Tim Hunter is excellent,with Hunter bringing a dark,eerie,somber and gritty tone to the film and uses great camera angles and shots. Great direction by Hunter.The score by Jurgen Kniper is masterful,dark,big and powerful and definitely fits in with the tone of the film. A great score by Kniper. The film also great songs on the soundtrack from Slayer(Die By The Sword,Evil Has No Boundaries,Tormentor,Captor Of Sin),Fates Warning(Kyrie Eleison),Hallows Eve(Lethal Tendencies),Agent Orange(Fire In The Rain),The Vipers(Let Me Know),Burning Spear(Happy Day)and Hank Ballard(I'm Gonna Miss you and Let's Go,Let's Go,Let's Go). Great soundtrack.In final word,if you love Teen Films,True life films,Drama films or films in general,I highly suggest you see River's Edge,a powerful,underrated classic that will stay in your mind after you watch it. Highly Recommended. 10/10.

An odd film about teenagers and how they deal with murder. The short answer to how they deal with it: they don't. Daniel Roebuck strangles his girlfriend to death after an argument, and when his stoner friends find out, they go examine the body. Unwilling to turn their friend in, they form a silent pact to keep it a secret. Some feel uneasy about that, but they're pretty emotionally disaffected. Crispin Glover plays Roebuck's biggest defender, Keanu Reeves the teen who eventually cracks under pressure and Ione Skye Reeves' girlfriend. Dennis Hopper plays the gang's nutjob drug dealer who has a special relationship with a blow-up doll. Joshua Miller, who would turn in an extremely memorable performance as a child vampire in the following year's Near Dark, plays Reeves' younger brother, a 12 year-old who idolizes the older teens. Miller probably gives my favorite performance in the film. Hopper is also fine, though this is pretty much the same kind of role he had in Blue Velvet, which was made around the same time. All the other actors, though, are pretty lousy. Glover can be fun at times, but you can't let him anywhere near anything even semi-serious - he's too goofy to handle it. And Reeves, while playing the type of character he would eventually excel at in the Bill & Ted movies, is very weak. Still, with all of the film's flaws, it's so unusual that it's never less than interesting.

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.