not as good as all the hype

good back-story, and good acting

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

It's not uncommon to see films about childhood that show life prom their point of view and incorporate an element of fantasy in the process, but it's rare that the vision be this bleak and the fantasy so dark. Little Seth has a lot to deal with ... his friends are disappearing and turning up murdered. His father is suspected due to a past homosexual indiscretion. His mother is a crazy person obsessed with the smell of gasoline and the return of his elder brother (Viggo Mortensen) from WWII. His neighbor, a very depressed widow, is a vampire ... and she's probably killing his brother. His dead friend returns as some sort of rotting fetal angel. Friendly leather boys roam the plains in a shiny car.Dick Pope's cinematography is beautiful. Fans of David Lynch want to see this, yet it has it's own very unique tone.

I've seen many films and many movies(yes I believe there to be a difference. this particular piece has me scratching my head a bit. I get the metaphor of how terrible the innocence of childhood can be, how not having the perspective of an adult can totally perplex the more serious tones. The boy is meant to feel isolated, this is characterized by the open landscapes and wheat fields -both serene like some old Americana oil painting and starkly cold, lonely even. In this film the boy is bombarded with all kinds of different things. Death of children, allegations of homosexuality or child molestation(never clarified), his father's suicide,incest, the confusing ramblings of age and death from his widow neighbor(whom he believes to be a vampire).I do get the message, it's literally told to us by Dolphin-she slaps of in the face with it verbally in case some have missed the point. This I feel doesn't make up for some of the more disturbing moments.(dead fetus anyone?) yes he is innocent as to what it is but damn, those were some disturbing scenes. The frog scene as well I get it they don't realize their folly, or about death so they laugh with glee at its demise. The older brother character wasn't all that confusing and was easy to see he possibly was going through radiation poisoning due to his involvement in the pacific during his duty and how some of those symptoms could be misinterpreted by the boy as being the victim of vampirism.Yes I understand the entire metaphor of the film, how the car of hooligans represent death, how he didn't feel like he needed a ride just yet. I do feel this film quite pretentious in its execution of said metaphor and was very close to imitating the boys final scene a a reaction to having viewed this over repeating, indulgent, pretentious piece of work.

As a psychologist who has worked with child abuse victims and their families for over 30 years, and as a survivor of horrific child abuse myself, I would say that The Reflecting Skin is the most psychologically accurate depiction of child abuse that I've ever seen. And certainly the most uncompromising in terms of not romanticizing the victim. In The Reflecting Skin--SPOILER ALERT--the central victim is an 8-year-old farm boy, who is traumatized at one time or another by nearly everyone in his life. His mother, Ruth, rejects him and punishes him with water poisoning. His father, Luke, commits suicide in front of him. A depressed young widow, Dolphin Blue, terrorizes him with details of her husband's suicide and remnants of his corpse she has saved in a cigar box. Even his beloved older brother, Cameron, who himself is a victim of both his mother's incestuous advances and the US military's atomic testing program in the Pacific, is sometimes physically and emotionally abusive towards him—at one point showing him the photo of a Hiroshima baby with "reflecting skin," from which the film takes its names. But unlike the usual tearjerker Hollywood movie about child abuse, Seth is no more an "innocent angel" than is his brother or his father or his friends who get murdered. At the point we meet Seth running through a Van Gogh-colored field with a huge toad in his hands, he is already turning into the next generation of abuser—happily blowing up that toad with air the same way his mother blows him up with water. And he manages to retaliate against one of the adult abusers in his environment, Dolphin Blue, in the process. But he doesn't mean to kill her. Yet that is where his silence about the gang of serial killers he sees roaming the country roads in a black Caddy finally leads. That is the realization that finally shatters him. But what alternative to silence does he have? The best chance he has of stopping the killers is when Sheriff Ticker tries to force him into spilling his secrets. Yet the sheriff is so verbally abusive to Seth—even to the point of threatening to split Seth's head open to get the truth out of him—that Seth freezes and says nothing. Like most abused kids Seth believes that he's entirely on his own. And to judge from all the negative reviews of this film he has reason to feel that no one will understand him and know how to help him. Because of all the abuse he's already internalized at the point the film begins, he is no more lovable as a victim than the mummified fetus he tries to make his friend.

The Reflecting Skin appears to be a film that is dividing opinions among all those who have seen it. I did really want to like it; but unfortunately the fact is that the film just isn't nearly as good as it could have been, and the result is a stylish mess with a handful of good ideas. The main problem with the film from my point of view is the fact that there's no actual story to it; there's some flow to the plot, but it doesn't seem to have any meaning, which means that the film ends up with only the imagery to lend it any substance; and this isn't enough to keep the film interesting. The film takes place in the middle of a desert sometime during the 1950's. The main character is Seth Dove; a young kid that gets his kicks by exploding frogs and vandalising people's homes. His family harbours some dark secrets, which come to the fore when a neighbourhood kid is killed. Meanwhile, his father's stories of vampires have lead the kid to believe that a woman that lives nearby may be one of the undead.The film is often labelled as a part of the horror genre; but aside from some vague notions of vampirism, the film really isn't horror. I suppose it would be best described as fantasy. The main problem with the film is undoubtedly the poor script, which features terrible dialogue and doesn't properly address many issues; for example, the kid coming to believe that his neighbour is a vampire emerges after a thirty second dialogue between father and son about a vampire book! The film is not helped by the lead character; Seth Dove is not easy to like at all - his actions and mannerisms made me hate the kid. The acting is not particularly good either; lead actor Jeremy Cooper unsurprisingly had only a couple of film credits after this one, while Viggo Mortensen appears before he would go on to mature into a good performer. I do have to admit that the film is not a complete dead-loss; in terms of substance it is, but at least the style of the film is good; director Phillip Radley makes good use of the locations and there are also a handful of good ideas blended into the film. Overall, however, I can't recommend this film.