Mean Creek **** (2004, Rory Culkin, Ryan Kelley, Scott Mechlowicz) – Classic Movie Review 966

Writer-director Jacob Aaron Estes’s 2004 well-crafted revenge thriller is taut, tense, creepy and a little bit scary. In Stephen King Stand By Me mode, it’s an unsettling little thought provoker as well as fear ride.

Rory Culkin stars as teenager Sam Merrick, who is beaten up by local bully George Tooney (Josh Peck). Trevor Morgan plays Sam’s older brother Rocky, who concocts a plan with his buddies Clyde (Ryan Kelley) and Marty (Scott Mechlowicz) and Sam’s girlfriend Millie (Carly Schroeder) to teach George a lesson.

They pretend it’s Sam’s birthday to lure George on a boat trip during which they would humiliate him by making him strip naked, jump in the lake and run home naked. However, as the day goes by, the others have a change of heart and want to call off the plan, but Marty refuses and gets nasty.

With a credible script, smart cinematography, a tomandandy score and fine acting all round, this is first-rate low-budget (just $500,000) American indie film-making. Mechlowicz, so nice in Eurotrip, does a great line in nasty. The filming was in the Clackamas River, Oregon.

Producer Hagai Shaham has a cameo as ‘Handsome Police Officer’.

By 2014, Estes has only one other movie to his credit, The Details (2011) with Tobey Maguire.

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