Product Details

• Actors: Brady Corbet, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elisabeth Shue, Chase Ellison, George Webster
• Directors: Gregg Araki
• Writers: Gregg Araki, Scott Heim
• Producers: Gregg Araki, Beau J. Genot, Chris Larsen, Hans C. Ritter, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte
• Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (DTS 5.1)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NC-17
• Studio: Strand Releasing
• DVD Release Date: October 25, 2005
• Run Time: 105 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (161 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000ATQYQU
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,345 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Mysterious Skin (Original Theatrical Director's Cut)" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Though the subject matter of Mysterious Skin is as sensational as that of Gregg Araki's other films (such as Totally F***ked Up, The Doom Generation, or The Living End), his direction is richer and more multilayered than ever before. Two Kansas teenagers named Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 10 Things I Hate About You) and Brian (Brady Corbett, Thirteen) share a childhood trauma--but their responses are radically different: Neil hustles tricks, while Brady, who can't remember what happened, believes he was abducted by aliens and left with "missing time." As both try to make sense of their lives and Brian struggles to find out the truth, Mysterious Skin builds to an emotional pitch that some viewers will find uncomfortable and others will find liberating. The characters of Neil and Brian have a fullness that lifts Mysterious Skin above most examinations of sexual abuse and trauma. Gordon-Levitt has been deservedly praised by the critics, but the entire cast--which also includes Bill Sage (Simple Men), Elizabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas), Michelle Trachtenberg (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and Mary Lynn Rajskub (24)--turns in superb performances. A striking and powerful movie. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker

The director Gregg Araki's film, based on the sensational (in every sense of the word) novel by Scott Heim, retains the lo-fi road-movie atmosphere of his previous works ("The Living End," "The Doom Generation"), but there's a heartening maturity this time around. The story concerns an adolescent hustler (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who's haunted by child abuse, and his former Little League teammate (Brady Corbet), who's attempting to find an answer to the amnesia he suffers when trying to recall a past incident. The actors capture the sad yearning of the characters, and Michelle Trachtenberg and Elisabeth Shue give strong supporting performances. Although this is Araki's best work, the film is finally too dreamy to dramatize the urgent storytelling of the novel. It drifts with an on-the-road aimlessness, losing its initial sexy, dark power. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the very best films of 2005., April 11, 2006

By 

I. Sondel "I. Sondel - lover of the arts" (Tallahassee, FL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mysterious Skin (Original Theatrical Director's Cut) (DVD)

I read Scott Heim's novel "Mysterious Skin" a number of years ago, and found it powerful and challenging. When I learned that Gregg Araki was making a film based on the book, I was apprehensive. "Msterious Skin" deals with the long lasting effects of child abuse. The last thing one wants when approaching this subject from an artistic stand point, is to be in any way exploitive. The good news is that Mr. Araki's has triumphed - his is a brilliant film. The performances throughout are outstanding - especially that of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as an in-your-face gay teen who uses sex as a means to an end - whether hustling or simply giving it away. Brady Corbet delivers in the quieter role of Brian, who has so effectively blocked the memory of his abuse that he has come to believe that he may have been a victim of alien abduction.

This is a tough little film, dealing with topics that most people shy away from - child sexual molestation, drug abuse, prostitution and homosexuality. Araki doesn't flinch or shy away from any of them. It is a testsment to his incredible talent that he has made a film from this material which is both palatable and compelling.

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Innocence Lost., May 29, 2006

By 

Jennifer Heath (Somerville, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mysterious Skin (Original Theatrical Director's Cut) (DVD)

Be forewarned: This film takes a frank look at pedophilia, prostitution, and rape from the perspective of two sexually abused boys. If you are honestly interested in understanding the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse, director Gregg Araki's film is an extremely thoughtful and non-exploitive examination of a painful and relatively neglected film topic.

In Hutchison, Kansas, during the summer of 1981, Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Brian (Brady Corbett), are molested by their little league baseball coach (Bill Sage). Brian's response to the abuse is to blackout and to forget what happened to him. In order to account for his two blackouts, Brian imagines that aliens abducted him. Neil, however, becomes the team's star player, and develops a summer long relationship with Coach. Unlike Brian, Neil both remembers and attempts to control and re-experience his exploitation by becoming a male prostitute. Eventually, Brian, haunted by bizarre dreams, seeks to end his general sense of malaise. After a fellow alien abductee encourages him to follow the clues from his dreams, Brian discovers that he and Neil share a common past.

So many of the things in this film are spot on. In point of fact, boys are more often abused by babysitters, coaches, and teachers. And while Neil tells his best friend Wendy about the abuse (after making her witness his abuse of another boy), neither boy tells his parents. Also, there is no recognizable symptom of sexual abuse; the two boys respond to their experience in remarkable different ways. Neil identifies with his abuser; Brian disassociates himself from his sexuality. Though both boys develop compulsive behaviors, the film skirts clear of oversimplifying their psychological distress. And probable the most painful scene in the film, the revictimization of Neil at the hands of a client, reminds us of one horrible after effect of childhood sexual abuse; abuse victims are more likely to be raped as adolescents and adults.

The weakest links in this film are the portrayals of Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg) and Mrs. M. (Elisabeth Shue). Both Trachtenberg and Shue are too wholesome for their roles. The "edge" that both Wendy and Mrs. M. should have ( after all, Mrs. M is a single mom who works as a cashier by day while entertaining herself with an ever changing stream of bedmates by night, while Wendy insinuates that she lacks parental care and attention) is conveyed through visual gimmicks (the ubiquitous cigarette, tough make-up and wild hair styles) rather than compelling acting.

Unlike others who have seen this film, I do not think that Araki was seeking to portray Coach as a nice guy, or even as a morally ambiguous guy. Rather, Araki is showing us a true sexual predator - a wolf in sheep's clothing, as it were. Sexual predators work very hard to establish trust -- which requires at least a veneer of niceness - since trust is necessary in order for them to do what they want to do to their child victims. If anything, I thought Araki showed how deeply confusing and painful it was for Neil to grapple with what he wanted to believe about Coach -- that Coach loved and cared about him -- with reality -- Coach's interest in Neil was limited to Neil's usefulness as a means of sexual satisfaction.

The film's final scene, in which Brian and Neil begin to heal a traumatic betrayal of trust by trusting each other, will stay with me for a very long time.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A significant achievement, August 29, 2005

By 

Steven Reynolds (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mysterious Skin (Original Theatrical Director's Cut) (DVD)

In the summer of '81, Kansas 8-year-olds Neil and Brian are both sexually abused by their Little League coach, but their reactions could not be more different. For the sexually precocious Neil, it's a sexual awakening, setting him on the path to becoming a gay hustler and a life of such emotional numbness that he looks back on Coach as his "one true love". For Brian, it's a hellish experience his brain all but erases with 5 hours of lost time, leaving him shy, remote, unable to engage romantically with anyone, and floundering through adolescence struggling to make sense of what happened to him. It's only when he finally reconnects with Neil after a decade of searching that all the pieces finally fall into place... Gregg Araki's significant achievement here is to make a movie that is as moving as it is pitiless in the depiction of abuse and its consequences. The writing is crisp, the performances brave and convincing (Joseph Gordon-Levitt especially), and it's so brilliantly structured and edited that the only time any abuse is actually "seen" is in the minds of the audience during the moving final confessional sequence. It's hard to believe that this bold and tender film could be criticised for its masterful handling of a difficult subject, yet it aroused the ire of ludicrously conservative film and literature classification bodies here in Australia. Members were apparently alarmed that it might be used as some kind of training video for paedophiles in how to "groom" their victims. On the contrary: rarely has a film so powerfully and effectively argued against abuse by showing its devastating consequences.