I guess what I was saying before is that I like movies to always feel like movies. Realism to me is in the actor's portrayal of a character more than it is in brutal violence. The style of the filmmaking was that it should look like a documentary. The style of the writing was that in some ways it should be clever social commentary (peppered with references to chauvenism, peace, womanhood, love, drugs) and a sort of after school special. At least, that's how I take the scenes with Mari at the beginning talking about boys and breasts. The way she talks about "changing" feels just like one of the those kids' educational videos.

But I think most people who saw this movie felt the violence was brutal enough, real enough, and that the cruelty of the characters felt quite real. As did the fact that the girls' deaths were long and drawn out. Which is supposed to be vastly different to how deaths are typically portrayed in most mainstream movies. Though they didn't really have Friday the 13th films at the time where the people would get an ax or machete in the head and just fall down, I'm told the film was one of the first to show the horror of realistic death.

Thank you. One of the things I think makes this movie so much for people is that, regardless of how cheap some people feel the characters are, many people feel the events are really tragic. And it is. In fact, everyone seems destroyed by what the criminals did. But, why did they do it? This movie really takes place in a hopeless world.

Everything is depressing when people aren't cracking jokes. I guess in that respect, the cops are put in proper context. Because they aren't the only thing that comes off jokey. Everyone cracks a joke or 3 in the movie. Before they see that things aren't so funny after all.

But the story of the girls is very tragic. Innocence and youth taken before its time. In a very violent way. But, how innocent is anyone in the world this movie takes place in? Everyone is corrupted by film's end. That to me says there's something wrong with the world too.

If it had just been a movie about people stabbing each other and cutting each other open in the woods, I don't think it would be as disturbing as this movie was. I don't think we'd still be talking about it after all these years.