Good story, Not enough for a whole film

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

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.

Samson 'John' Tollet (Daniel Roebuck) is a strange guy. But nobody foresaw that he would kill his girlfriend Jamie. He left her naked body on the river's edge. When he tells everybody, nobody believed him. When people actually saw the body, everybody must deal with it in their own way.The friends are all heavy metal listening slacker disaffected teens. Keanu Reeves plays the nice guy Matt. He's conflicted about Jamie's death. He knows something is morally wrong but he's unable to voice it at first. Keanu is able to inhabit this role perfectly. His uncomfortableness with Layne afterwards is amazing. Ione Skye plays Clarissa the sweet girl who just can't get up the courage to call the police. But it's Crispin Glover who steals the show playing Layne. He is the complete amoral weirdo. It's almost as if he enjoys the rush. It's more than a simple great movie. It's actually giving a slice of humanity and inhumanity without being preachy. It is unique.

I didn't know this movie was based on a true events when I first saw this film. But now knowing that it is based on a true events adds to the value of it. Because even if it isn't based on a true event, it's still one of those shocking suburban movies dealing with teens inner-self and rebellion. The story is basically about a dead body and couple of teens that witnessed a dead body. And the thing is they know the murderer because he went around bragging about it. But took quite a while before someone reported the murder. Now again I saw this film without knowing it's based on a true story, but if you do watch this while knowing it's based on a true story it might add to the shock factor of it all. This sort of made me think about the human conscience and unstable people out there. Now this film will probably known for having Keanu Reeves when he was at his peak when it comes to his looks. But the show stealer is Crispin Glover, who is the most memorable character in this film and his freakouts are just so darn humorous. Yeah, I kinda feel bad about adding the word humorous for a movie like this, especially when it's based on a true event. But he does add a bit of humor to this movie as this over obsessive guy that spas out occasionally with motives and intentions that is so darn awkward. Or just doesn't make much sense. Any fan of Crispin Glover should check this film out. It's a shocking and engrossing film about teens with disillusioned thoughts and warped conscience. There is also one of the most annoying 12yr old kid character in this.8/10

I don't entirely know what to make of this film. On the one hand, I can see that it's an examination of teen apathy, social ambivalence and post-familial-dysfunction angst etc etc but it's also really rather silly in terms of improbable plot and ridiculous unlikely overblown characters, but apparently it's based on a true story so perhaps not. One young man (John - Daniel Roebuck) kills his girlfriend without emotion or regret, he is psychopathic, just intent on causing mayhem for no apparent reason an plays detached, dangerous and scary brilliantly. He is seen by a twelve year old boy, Tim, and both of them brag about the killing, and knowing where the body is. There are shades of Stand by Me, a coming of age journey in the film - the characters learn about themselves through the experience of seeing the body and also the viewer is narrated to via speeches by both the school teacher and Matt, to explain the troubles witnessed in the film. The acting is in part dreadful and brilliant, and with Crispin Glover's performance as Layne I'm not sure whether he was bad or brilliant; he plays one of the friends who is desperate to be part of the group - the leader - and tries to hold them all together, afraid of being on his own, but overplayed in a character so apart from his friends, addled, druggie, like he's method acting a caricature of a stoner drop-out teen, and just flailing around in exaggerated gestures. Joshua Miller, as the twelve year old Tim, younger brother of Reeves' Matt, is cartoonish, androgynous and even camp, and he is performing acting by numbers. The film reminds me in places of Lost Boys but at least that had the guts to say "Hey! This IS a comedy!" but River's Edge is stuck with trying really hard to be a drama and I'm not sure it works without the comedy that some of the hammy acting, and silly one-liners, Dennis Hopper's character Feck with his inflatable girlfriend and general silliness adds but detracts from the horror of the story. Dennis Hopper was amazing, hardly surprising, in his delivery and was one of the actors that stood out and above the rest as "real" rather than "acting." Keanu's Matt is the quiet, relatable, real character and he plays son of dysfunctional family, school drop-out, even father and dominant male figure in places to his sister and mother, and demonstrates the complex and above-age roles that some young people have to play behind the scenes - they are labelled as "difficult" but there's more to them. Perhaps the same with Crispin's Layne; he looks like a waste of space and an unphlegmatic idiot; but he stands up to the situation and standing by John (Roebuck). Hopper's schizophrenic-type delusion are brilliant. For me, however, Reeves stands out, his gentle delivery and subtleness perfect for the troubled and nervous Matt, against Ione Skye's Clarissa he is shy and easily led, she seems to deal with the death of her friend by throwing herself at Matt - well, who can blame her really? - 22yo Reeves was stunning and appeared like a different creature compared to everyone else's look. He, Hopper and Roebuck stood out as the actors that blended into the screenplay, their character's environment and the plot whereas the other's stuck out as trying to do that.It's a good film. You can take it as a dark comedy or you can read more into it. I'm not sure whether you should read into this, or whether it is just what it is but as 80s films go it's a bit deeper and less fluffy than most of them, and surprised me with how watchable it is and how it is still relatable and up to date.