73
Metascore
19 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 88Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertRiver's Edge is not a film I will forget very soon. Its portrait of these adolescents is an exercise in despair.
- 80EmpireAlan MorrisonEmpireAlan MorrisonA disquieting tale set in the grim realities of trashy America. Some great, often insane performances make it a memorable trip.
- It’s sloppily written, heavy-handed, and tonally inconsistent—but it remains striking for its bleakness and a smattering of bizarre, unhinged performances from Crispin Glover, Daniel Roebuck, and Dennis Hopper.
- 75TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineThis generation's postpunk worldview is rooted in nihilism, detachment, and fear of nuclear annihilation--nothing matters to them except friends, rock 'n' roll, and getting stoned. River's Edge also boasts the best cast of unknowns since Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders. Reeves and Skye are superb as the moral centers of the film, Roebuck is great as the killer, and the supporting performances are also impressive. Glover and Hopper go over the top and get away with it.
- 70Los Angeles TimesMichael WilmingtonLos Angeles TimesMichael WilmingtonThere's a lot of low-key poetry and nicely casual tension in Hunter's direction and in Frederick Elmes' cinematography--and the acting ensemble is fine. For all its flaws and the revulsion it may induce, River's Edge has something valuable: a dark, harrowing but moral perspective.
- 70The New York TimesJanet MaslinThe New York TimesJanet MaslinMr. Hunter has an extraordinarily clear understanding of teen-age characters, especially those who must find their own paths without much parental supervision. Though its Midwestern locale and lower socioeconomic stratum give it a different setting, River's Edge shares something with Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero, a novel that is also full of directionless, drug-taking teen-age characters who are without moral moorings and left entirely to their own devices. This is as chilling to witness as it is difficult to dramatize, if only because at their centers these lives are already so empty.
- 60Tim Hunter’s River’s Edge is an unusually downbeat and depressing youth pic. As group leader Layne, Crispin Glover could have used more restraint: he gives a busy, fussy performance. Others in the cast are more effective, with young Joshua Miller particularly Striking as the awful child, Tim.
- 60Chicago ReaderPat GrahamChicago ReaderPat GrahamIt's not easy keeping track of all the contradictory tensions, and the film seems forever on the verge of spinning totally out of control, though whose control—Hunter's? Elmes's? anyone's?—it's hard to say. Still, it's more a success than a failure, if only because the confusions are so protean.
- 60Washington PostDesson ThomsonWashington PostDesson ThomsonGlover (who shone as Michael J. Fox's father in Back to the Future) is riveting as Layne -- a speed-popping wacko more wired than AT&T And Joshua Miller, who plays Tim, the most malevolent child this side of the Styx, is alarmingly evil as the kid who wants to be part of the older gang, even if it means killing his own brother. But River stabs all-too-wildly in the dark.