Review of Thirteen (2003) by Mat S — 02 Sep 2012

I'm going to use a run-on sentence to explain, first of all I was NOT found of this one, however if the director was trying to capture the sudden turn into teen angst followed by the cringe-inducing behavior changes and results that's unfortunately accepted by peers for a backbone of high-school student body status, then it's safe to say the director at least succeeded at exploiting that alone. Not to mention Nikki Reed playing the film's antagonist, Evie Zamora. Reed captures the evil essence of a deep end bad friend, so well that a single look in here eyes can say more.

For the negatives,.

Catherine Hardwicke exploits this very blue melancholy piece even down to the film stock to build an atmosphere for a downward spiral for our protagonist. This is all and good, however, the film soon becomes near repetitive. we see our two girls doing similar things more than once, probably to show how destructive and self destructive their lives really are, but there's a time and place for these things, it's called a series. in a movie, you want to show something once and it hits harder and more shocking and the audience remembers it. Like in the Lucifer Valentine, movie Slaughtered Vomit Dolls, we see a killer ripping out someone's eyes, and it not only takes him five minutes to do so but the film repeats to show the audience it again and again and so on. The problem is it looses it's effect and soon goes from shocking and getting it's message across to just plain depressing.

I'll continue this review soon...