Adolescent bullying may be a subject of concern just now, but Jacob Aaron Estes's debut film will hardly be of much comfort to the bullied - or the bullies. Simply and effectively, in the guise of a coming-of-age movie, it shows that the consequences can be tragic.
The victim is Rory Culkin's schoolboy, Sam; the bully, George (Josh Peck), a porky adolescent with troubles of his own. Sam's elder brother, Rocky (Trevor Morgan), invites George on his brother's birthday river trip, with the intention of teaching him a lesson. His plan is to strip the bully of his clothes and send him home naked.
Since this is set in a small Oregon township, where everybody knows everybody else's business, Rocky's friends all go along with the jape, though on the way they find George more vulnerable than they first thought.
They begin to doubt the scheme but it is too late, and everything goes wrong. The point of the film, which is much more subtle than Larry Clark's Bully, is that bad acts produce further evil and it often spirals out of control.
The various back stories - one boy is being raised by two gay men and another's father killed himself - over-gild the lily.
But the performances are so good, and all is so well-controlled, that Mean Creek becomes an awful warning you can't ignore. The story translates into an adult moral fable, too.
