Mean Creek

The film Mean Creek, directed by Jacob Aaron Estes, is based around a group of teenagers who plan a playful revenge on a school bully. Coming of age is an important idea in the film because it targets us, as teenagers, and teaches us a lesson about “growing up.” This idea is portrayed through a group of teenagers and the experiences that they encounter throughout the film. Estes, uses a variety of visual and oral features to show a strong contrast when comparing each character from the start of the film to the end of the film as each character develops. The idea of coming of age relates well to issues that we have today such as making decisions and having confidence in ourselves, and through this idea Estes forces us as audience to consider how we would overcome these issues and what we would do were we in one of the characters’ positrons.

The revenge that intends to make the bully, George, aware of the weight of his actions does not end the way the teenagers plan. Instead, it results in the death of George and the death drags the teenagers into an entirely different world, away from where they used to belong. Estes uses lighting to highlight the change in the atmosphere of the scenes before and after George’s death. Natural lighting was used when the teenagers were playing ‘Truth or Dare’ game to create a bright and warm atmosphere of the scene before the incident happened. This symbolizes a world full of jokes and laughter that the teenagers were once in. On the other hand, lighting with an artificial, blue filter was used in the scene where the teenagers are all lost for their next move after the death of George to create its dull and gloomy atmosphere. This represents a world where only silence or arguments exist and continue that the teenagers have stepped in. The teenagers’ decision to take revenge on George clearly led to his death, and the strong contrast between the lighting explicitly demonstrates the connection between the two events; a choice and its...