KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

jtdb You ever wonder what kind of kids like to pulls the wings off of flies, or wallow in the lowest examples of humanity and then claim disingenuously that they're just "keeping it real?" This is a film for you--the worst of misanthropic Kubrick crossed with rock-bottom incomprehensible and lurid David Lynch. Some people think this is a masterpiece; they're welcome to it. Save the two hours of your life and avoid it--and them. (For a truly brilliant take on a disturbing subject that has flickers of insight and humanity--and a knockout performance from Joseph Gordon Leavitt--rent "Mysterious Skin" which deserves all the accolades this nasty, half-witted pile of garbage erroneously gets.)

Claudio Carvalho In the 50's, the eight year-old Seth Dove (Jeremy Cooper) uses to play prank with his friends Kim (Evan Hall) and Eben (Codie Lucas Wilbee) in the rural area of the United States. Seth lives with his father Luke Dove (Duncan Fraser), who runs a gas station and a junkyard in the middle of nowhere, and with his dysfunctional mother Ruth Dove (Sheila Moore), who misses her son Cameron Dove (Viggo Mortensen) that fought in the Pacific. One day, Luke is reading a vampire pulp and Seth asks his father about vampires. When Seth has to apologize for a prank to his neighbor, the widow Dolphin Blue (Lindsay Duncan), he believes she is a vampire. Eben is found murdered and Sheriff Ticker (Robert Koons) and his Deputy (David Bloom) blame Luke that has record of molestation. Luke does not bear the accusation and commits suicide while Seth believes Dolphin killed Eben. Cameron returns and soon he has a love affair with Dolphin while his little brother tries to discourage his brother to meet her. Kim is abducted by a group of youths in a black Cadillac and Seth witnesses the kidnapping. Soon Kim's body is found in a barn but Seth does not tell the Sheriff. When Dolphin asks for a ride to the driver of the Cadillac, Seth does not warn her. What will happen to Dolphin? "The Reflecting Skin" is an unknown little gem by Philip Ridley, with one of the darkest and weirdest stories of cinema. The disturbing plot is very well constructed and uses the innocence of a wicked eight year- old boy and how he fantasizes his interpretation of reality. All the characters are non-likable and vicious, from the children and families to the Sheriff and his Deputy. The cinematography is also very beautiful in the rural landscape with bright colors. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "O Reflexo do Mal" ("The Reflection of Evil")

ananias73 In 1990 British author and screenwriter Philip Ridley gave us one of the best (in my opinion among with "The Spirit of the Beehive" and "Let the Right One In"), deeply sensational and very frightening portrait of childhood full of cruel youths, abused children (Ridley avoids to shock the audience, it's preferable to horrify it as the black car appears through sun illusions - special kudos to the magnificent cinematography by Dick Pope), desperate people (the father, the English lady etc.) in their widely shut worlds of loneliness and fear from their own "crimes" of the past who decide to drink gasoline and light the fire (!) or they've been transformed into vampires through 10 years old Seth's eyes. A poetic, Gothic tale about lust, death, human nature and urban life, disturbing for some, to be praised for others (like Lynch, Jondorowksy and me). Sometimes (at least) is almost a hell to be an angel in life...

bwedin As a psychologist who has worked with child abuse victims and their families for over 30 years, and as a survivor of horrific child abuse myself, I would say that The Reflecting Skin is the most psychologically accurate depiction of child abuse that I've ever seen. And certainly the most uncompromising in terms of not romanticizing the victim. In The Reflecting Skin--SPOILER ALERT--the central victim is an 8-year-old farm boy, who is traumatized at one time or another by nearly everyone in his life. His mother, Ruth, rejects him and punishes him with water poisoning. His father, Luke, commits suicide in front of him. A depressed young widow, Dolphin Blue, terrorizes him with details of her husband's suicide and remnants of his corpse she has saved in a cigar box. Even his beloved older brother, Cameron, who himself is a victim of both his mother's incestuous advances and the US military's atomic testing program in the Pacific, is sometimes physically and emotionally abusive towards him—at one point showing him the photo of a Hiroshima baby with "reflecting skin," from which the film takes its names. But unlike the usual tearjerker Hollywood movie about child abuse, Seth is no more an "innocent angel" than is his brother or his father or his friends who get murdered. At the point we meet Seth running through a Van Gogh-colored field with a huge toad in his hands, he is already turning into the next generation of abuser—happily blowing up that toad with air the same way his mother blows him up with water. And he manages to retaliate against one of the adult abusers in his environment, Dolphin Blue, in the process. But he doesn't mean to kill her. Yet that is where his silence about the gang of serial killers he sees roaming the country roads in a black Caddy finally leads. That is the realization that finally shatters him. But what alternative to silence does he have? The best chance he has of stopping the killers is when Sheriff Ticker tries to force him into spilling his secrets. Yet the sheriff is so verbally abusive to Seth—even to the point of threatening to split Seth's head open to get the truth out of him—that Seth freezes and says nothing. Like most abused kids Seth believes that he's entirely on his own. And to judge from all the negative reviews of this film he has reason to feel that no one will understand him and know how to help him. Because of all the abuse he's already internalized at the point the film begins, he is no more lovable as a victim than the mummified fetus he tries to make his friend.