Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004)

Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004)
Rating: 6.2

This film is centered around the stories of two boys from Kansas, who are molested by their little league coach. It is an interesting look at the long term effects of sexual abuse on young children. "Mysterious Skin" grabs your attention early with amazing visual imagery and cinematography along with a stunning 'shoegazer' soundtrack. There are numerous homosexual scenes throughout. Some of which are very disturbing and I wouldn't recommend this film to someone who is uneasy about this sort of material. At times I found some of the dialogue to sound too melodramatic for a film trying to convey such a gritty and realistic look at life, and some of the character's accents annoyed me since I am from Kansas myself and they didn't quite match up. But aside from these minor faults, Joseph Gordon-Levitt delivers an outstanding performance in a difficult role as Neil McCormick, who becomes a gay hustler, while his co-star, Brian Lackey played by Brady Corbet instead represses his memories and insists he was abducted by aliens. There were several excellent supporting performances in the film as well, especially from Elisabeth Shue as Neil's mother and also from Mary Lynn Rajskub as Avalyn, a UFO obsessed friend of Brians.