Alicia I love this movie so much

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Irishchatter It was really upsetting and heartbreaking to see the two boys being sexual abused by a sick human being who was meant to be their coach. I wish these boys could've told their mums about what happened. They could've that sicko arrested and make him pee his own pants for what he has done to those children!It might look as if Neil was the only one traumatized by this trauma but really, himself and Brian were both really disturbed by this incident. It's just horrific and terribly sad for them both to go through their precious life with this. It would've been better if they both called for help and that they could've been able to cope better throughout their entire lives. I honestly felt so so sorry for them. This really gives us a message on how we live in such a evil world which is our species and we can't blame animals for this. We even can't blame the good people here but it's the truth, we live around evil in this world.

tieman64 A sad and disturbing film by Gregg Araki, "Mysterious Skin" stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbet as Neil and Brian, a pair of boys who are sexually abused by a football coach. This abuse psychologically affects both kids in vastly different ways.A frail kid, Brian's early life is shaped by a father who deems him "pathetic" and "effeminate". When he is finally abused by his football coach, Brian thus finds himself unable to reconcile the "love" of his distant father with the supposedly "loving" acts of a paedophile coach. He responds by erasing all memories of his abuse and eventually becoming an asexual teenager.Neil, however, progresses differently. A homosexual boy, Neil is confident in his sexuality precisely because his own potentially judgemental father is absent. When he is sexually abused, Neil thus idolises his abuser and views his abuser as the epitome of traditional, Western masculinity. Believing abuse to be "true love", and seeking more of it, Neil then descends into a life of increasingly violent prostitution.Fittingly, "Skin's" aesthetic veers from the innocence of childhood to the nightmarish world of sex crimes and paedophilia. Both worlds are constantly clawing at one another, Araki's leads frequently resorting to fantasy in an effort to restore lost innocence. Strange coming from a homosexual director like Araki, "Mysterious Skin" reinforces the myth that child abuse "causes" homosexuality. Anticipating these misreadings, Araki stresses that Neil was "proudly homosexual" long before being sexually abused. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is excellent as Neil, a kid who perversely pines for love, his attractive brand of doomed romanticism drawing others toward him like a vortex. Elisabeth Shue co-stars.7.9/10 – See "Capturing the Friedmans".

videorama-759-859391 Mysterious Skin is unlike the other Greg Araki films, as it doesn't feel like one, where normally there's crude humor within the drama, and sick violence, not to say The Living End, his debut was the other great one, where here he's climbed back up, and redeemed himself, in what is his best film. Alongside Palindromes, with it's pedophile themes, here this excellent films deals with the issues and scarring effects, it can have on one victim, that chiefly being of Corbett's innocent and slightly vulnerable character, that he wonderfully plays. Corbett is one of those really elite young actors, who I hadn't recognized years later as the plump psycho in the Funny Games remake. Here his character was abused as a kid by a baseball coach, spoiling him with lollies and taking him to R rated movies. One night he's punished, locked in a closet. Now in his teen years, he's having nightmares of alien abductions, where his only cure, could be going back to that of the past, revisiting his childhood, where he hunts down another of the victims, now a hustler, played by a take notice performance as seen in the great Joseph Gordan Levitt, who makes the movie his. His character sets no boundaries, picking up dirty old johns, one moustouched guy, also seen in Palindromes, another of that, being the creepy and evily smiling Billy Drago (check out his teeth). The film is a beautiful and poignant drama, and one of the more affecting films that deal with pedophilia, where to think it was initially in talks of being banned, that itself, is sick. Like these films, or ones that are banned, all together, these which are in denial of being shown, are crimes against cinema, for MS which luckily escaped a banning, was one of the best films and drama of 2005, where Mr Araki, should be proud to put his signature on. When our two long lost victims, finally meet which at first is, ugly, that last comforting scene, last moment, is one for the annals of cinematic memory. MS is a beautiful and dramatic Art house film which deserves bloody attention from all, with fantastic performances all around.

d_m_s I couldn't find any fault in this film at all. The acting, characters, storyline, directing, cinematography, soundtrack etc. were all fantastic. I was surprised to be so convinced by Gordon-Levitt's performance as he is not someone I am very keen on.It's very engaging, interesting, though-provoking and (despite the tragic subject matter) enjoyable.It reminded me a bit of Bully in the sense that it has very realistic and meaty characters in desperate situations and suffering from inner turmoil.It's been a while since a film has engaged me enough to score it a 10 and I am very pleased to have discovered this one.