So this movie was on Joe Bob, which means that it’s allegedly horror, but… honestly, I don’t see it. Yes, there’s an unpleasant and threatening character; yes, there are several deaths with varying levels of intentionality; but end of the day, it’s just not doing the horror thing. It’s not even really setting up an atmosphere of physical dread.

But the good news is that it’s pretty good. This is one of those weird movies that has an all-star cast by virtue of having cast people in the early days of their careers. A thirteen-year-old Jodie Foster plays a little kid whose parents we never see; a pre-Apocalypse Now Martin Sheen (looking like a young Charlie Sheen, but still sounding like his gravelly-voiced elder self) is a pedophile; various other people are kids, cops, or nosy landladies.

It’s probably not too much of a spoiler to say that the reason we never see Foster’s parents is that they aren’t living with her, and she’s basically trying to pull a Pippi Longstocking and live on her own. Foster does a great job playing this preternaturally calm, resourceful, and willful teenager — like, she both seems like she’s thirteen (because she is), but also that she’s way older than her years.

Apparently the director of this movie also didn’t consider it horror, and considered it a teen love story. I tbh buy that: There is a burgeoning relationship that is the emotional center of the film, and a huge portion of its running time is these characters explaining themselves to each other; if you took Martin Sheen’s character out, you’d lose a lot of the movie’s most intense scenes, but there’d still be a coherent movie there.

Recommended for people who want a low-key teen drama with ps some dead bodies.