KNIVES AND SKIN

Teenager Carolyn Harper goes missing, but Jennifer Reeder is more interested in the people she left behind than in solving her disappearance. She explores their lives in an anxious but dream-like narrative: at best, lives that are mediocre and wasted, at worst, cruel and perverse, and which have stifled the young. Reeder’s pungent portrayal of this small-town wasteland spares few of its adults, but Carolyn has left a precious gift to her peers: a glimpse of the highway out.

Part pop-Gothic, part neo-noir, Knives and Skin is an immersive dip into a teen movie of rare intelligence and power.