THE debut feature Mean Creek by Jacob Aaron Estes isn’t the first film to explore the dark side of adolescence, when hormones are raging, the need to fit in and assert a newfound identity is building and the urge for revenge for perceived injustices is sorely acute. It recalls earlier movies with similar plots, including River’s Edge.

Like Larry Clark’s Bully and Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, the kids in Mean Creek also seem to exist in a world without parents, or with parents oblivious to their children’s troubled lives. Yet Estes’s film still feels like its own story. It captures the swagger and indecision, intimidation and fearfulness, rebellion and conformity of teenage behaviour through potently naturalistic performances by its young actors.

Chief among equals is Rory Culkin, who makes it easy to forget his older brother’s Home Alone reign of child-star terror. He plays Sam, a teenager in rural Oregon who is the repeated victim of a beefy, playground bully, George.

Reluctantly, Sam lets his older brother Rocky and his two pals set George up for some “harmless”, humiliating revenge.

The gang invites George to join their weekend boating trip along a desolate creek, during which they’ll leave him naked on a bank. But when George displays a needy loneliness amid his nastiness, Sam and his best friend Millie want to call off the prank.

It’s not that easy. Each of the kids has tics and issues that amp up the tension on the boat. With Rocky’s friend Marty, a manipulative brooder of the Matt Dillon/James Dean variety with a messed-up home life and a thing for guns, proving to be the real bully, something inevitably goes fatally, tragically wrong.

Part of the film’s strength is the way it spends time on the causes of that horrible event. Sadly the script can veer into cliched, sad-teen territory and makes a jarring dash to an unsatisfying conclusion, as if the budget was running out. Yet the performances and Estes’s use of handheld cameras and natural light capture the unsettling restlessness of youthful aggression. Despite its faults, this is an impressive debut.

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