This movie about teens is for adults only.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 26, 2010

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 14, 2007

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2006

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 29, 2005

Estes' dark sunlit tale cuts like a knife.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 19, 2004

A low-key, low-budget thriller that reminds us just how cruel young people can be.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 24, 2004

Although it is a flawed film, with a first half that moves slowly and sometimes tediously, it is redeemed by a second half that is gripping, not only for its action but for its moral complexity.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 23, 2004

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 19, 2004

You could call Mean Creek a moral thriller. And the emotional currents the movie wades into are far more tricky than the gentle surface the kids' boat floats along.

Full Review | Sep 17, 2004

In its simple portrait of a bully Mean Creek may be one of the most political and socially conscious films of the year.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Sep 10, 2004

As odd as it may sound, the best of the many good things that can be said of writer-director Jacob Aaron Estes' debut feature Mean Creek is that it could have been written by a teenager.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 10, 2004

Watching them finally come together in universal realizations as to what has transpired and their parts played in it is like watching Greek Tragedy in my own backyard.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 4, 2004

There are all sorts of other themes at work below the surface, including examinations of teenage peer pressure and moral responsibility.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 4, 2004

Estes dives into this material as if it's never been done before, and his characters and situations are so realistic and the film's tone is so assured that he succeeds at making it feel fresh.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 3, 2004

An unusually truthful depiction of the way kids today talk, think and act.

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 3, 2004

Very much its own picture -- and a damn sight better one than Stand by Me.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 3, 2004

Exceptionally strong performances from the entire cast draw you into the movie's deliberately provocative world.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 31, 2004

Takes its place alongside Stand by Me and River's Edge as one of very few films to accurately portray the experience of growing up male.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Aug 27, 2004

Estes has an uncanny knack for creating character, and for finding the kind of throwaway detail that resonates.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 27, 2004

Yet another small gem from the strong Sundance class of 2004, Mean Creek mines credible drama from teenage revenge fantasies.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 27, 2004