Rivers Edge - movie for a rainy afternoon
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(Credit: Island Pictures)
Hear Me Out: ‘River’s Edge’ is the best movie for a rainy afternoon
Tue 17 September 2024 13:30, UK
As the days shorten and the gloom sets in, it’s important to look for the positives. Surely chief among them is accidentally stumbling upon the perfect movie-watching weather, especially as fallen leaves, brisk evenings, and interminable twilights increasingly mark the days.
But while the autumn is usually reserved for the annual spooky festivities and the inevitable run of horror properties making a quick grab for the Halloween buck, there’s a film that goes perfectly with a rainy afternoon, regardless of the season.
River’s Edgeis a 1986 crime drama set in Northern California, following a group of teens who find themselves helping a friend cover up the murder of his girlfriend—a girl they were all close to. As dark and nihilistic as the premise sounds, the film is elevated by a heightened sense of camp, making it both unsettling and immensely watchable. Its moody atmosphere and raw performances contribute to its lasting impact as a cult classic.
A young Keanu Reeves anchors the film as Matt, a post-punk cypher and would-be moral centre if the story didn’t play out like a small-town version of Less than Zero. He and his pack of doomed friends dress and act a bit like the vampiric Lost Boys if they could go out in the sunlight. Not that it makes a difference – the film is as damp as it is camp, with its Los Angeles location shoots somehow able to portray the perpetual gloaming of the Pacific Northwest accurately. In this town, it appears to always be drizzling.
And as much as a time capsule as the costuming and the thrash metal and post-punk soundtrack featuring Slayer, Agent Orange, and Wipers are the pair of character actors who elevate something trashy into something great. Eternal lunatic Crispin Glover tears through school hallways and video arcades as the hyper-manic Layne, a teenager who will do anything – literally anything – for his friends.
Then there’s intergenerational oddball Dennis Hopper, playing a drug dealer with a murky but likely blood-soaked past and a domestic relationship with a blow-up doll. Filmed in the same year as Blue Velvet, it appears that more than a little Frank Booth leaked over into his performance.
At its heart, River’s Edge shares DNA with ancestors like Rebel Without a Cause or The Outsiders and the works of Larry Clark. It’s a dark and sardonic answer to Pump Up the Volume or Empire Records, capturing the moral panic of a time when the American media machine was all revved up about teenagers conducting satanic rituals and listening to records backwards in the backwoods.
River’s Edge is a film that doesn’t really refute any of the misinformation that ran rampant at the time – not every teen was Ricky ‘The Acid King’ Kasso – but instead takes the milieu of teenage hopelessness and uses it for a schlocky rain-soaked playground. At the time, that might have been irresponsible. Nowadays, it’s both a great museum piece and a great time.
So let the river break its edges next time the heavens open on a lazy afternoon and see Reeves stammer through one of his first appearances on celluloid.
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