Summary from the official website:

"The summer I was eight years old, five hours disappeared from my life. Five hours, lost, gone without a trace..."

These are the words of Brian Lackey (Brady Corbet), a troubled 18 year-old, growing up in the stiflingly small town of Hutchinson, Kansas. Plagued by nightmares, Brian believes that he may have been the victim of an alien abduction. Local Neil McCormick (Joseph Gordon Levitt) however, is the ultimate beautiful outsider. With a loving but promiscuous mother (Elisabeth Shue), Neil is wise beyond his years and curious about his developing sexuality, having found what he perceived to be love from his Little League baseball coach (played by Hal Hartley veteran Bill Sage) at a very early age. Now, ten years later, Neil is a teenage hustler, nonchalant about the dangerous path his life is taking.

Neil's pursuit of love leads him to New York City, while Brian's voyage of self discovery leads him to Neil - who helps him to unlock the dark secrets of their past. Based on the acclaimed novel by Scott Heim, "Mysterious Skin" explores the hearts and minds of two very different boys who come to find the key to their future happiness lies in the exorcism of their collective demons.

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I find it hard to put into words my thoughts of this movie. It's powerful, brutally honest, not overly sentimental yet incredibly sensitive in its handling of the entire premise. It takes u deep into the lives of these 2 boys and exposes the traumatic impact that these early experiences have given them. At the end of the day, the film throws no judgement at the paths that each of them chose. What instead is being presented is the intimate portrayal of two young men in search of support and closure to their past and their attempts at understanding and coping with the event. The ending scene left a particularly deep and haunting impression in me. To me, it was a scene that was pure and poignant, emerging almost beautifully, as if it was a final message to the audience that whatever paths these boys took, however they finally coped with the incident, it doesn't erase the fact that abuse will forever affect their lives, and there's no turning back.

I marvelled at the fine performances the young actors, particularly the 2 leads, who were very convincing in their roles. In fact, the very daring performance of Joseph Gorden-Levitt, who plays Neil, left me in awe at his ability to convey the confusion, the angst and the recklessness of the character. Brady Corbet, who plays Brian, has a subtle role but no doubt handles it well too.

It's a difficult movie for its theme and the issues that are being raised, not to mention the content as well which tends to be explicit yet handled with great care and respect. A highly recommended movie.

Rated R(21) in Singapore.


Trivia:

I read from IMDB that the Australian Family Association intended to lobby for the ban of this movie (related article here), for the reason "the film could be used by pedophiles for their own satisfaction or to help them groom children they were planning to abuse", after only reading the synopsis of the film.

There's a discussion thread about it here.

Personally, I think it's unfortunate that there are groups out there who hold such a 'perfect' view of the world that they refuse to accept the harsh issues that certain films bring out. It's no use escaping from such societal problems which are very much real. In fact, to me, the more u refuse to acknowedge these problems, the more u're allowing culprits to act. Child sexual abuse is present in society and it's incredibly naive to expect that by simply not mentioning it, the problem will go away by itself. In fact, more people should watch this movie, take a glimpse into the emotional trauma of these victims, their pain, their struggle... They need to be recognised and helped, not shunned as taboo issues that threaten to contaminate a society that is, in reality, already contaminated.

In fact, here's a comment by an IMDB user:
As a sexual assault advocate for more than four years, I've worked with a lot of survivors of childhood sexual abuse and rape. I've seen and heard it all. But I wasn't prepared for how this film would hit me. I'm used to helping people put their lives back together in the aftermath - sometimes almost immediately after an assault. The fact that every person copes with sexual trauma differently was realistically and painfully portrayed in "Mysterious Skin". The movie really helps break the silence about child abuse - mkmandel from United States

In addition, many viewers were concerned by the use of 2 child actors in the portrayal of the abuse scenes. However, they should be relieved to note that they recieved different scripts from the adults, scripts that do not expose them to scenes that I'm sure children will find diffucult to understand. The mother of one of the child actors tells more in this discussion thread.


The following are taken from IMDB.com

To prepare for his role, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt spent a week visiting cities and towns in Kansas where the book is set. Scott Heim, author of the original novel, guided him around the locations and had him meet the actual people on whom the characters are based.

Each of the youths in the film is based in part on the life of Scott Heim, the book on which the film is based. Scott claims to have seen a UFO with his family, excelled in school and lived with his single mom after a divorce (like Brian), he announced baseball games (like Neil) and his infatuation with cosmetics and British goth pop made him the subject of death threats (like Eric).