Review: Thirteen (2003)

Thirteen (2003)

Rated R for drug use, self destructive violence, language and sexuality - all involving young teens

Score: 4 out of 5

Thirteen is... a lot. At its heart, it's fundamentally a "troubled teen" drama of a sort that dates back to Rebel Without a Cause, a subverted coming-of-age story in which the young protagonist's life goes off the rails as they become more "grown-up". This film may have been about a girl instead of a boy, but it's still playing in that wheelhouse, and even the gender-flip on the material isn't so shocking now after HBO's show Euphoria. No, what keeps this film fresh, even scary at times, is both the use of actual teenage actors (Evan Rachel Wood and Nikki Reed were fifteen when they starred in this) and director Catherine Hardwicke avoiding the tone of moral judgment and preachiness that often clouds the lesser examples of this genre, her documentary-esque cinema verité style simultaneously keeping the film grounded and letting the fucked-up situations that its protagonists find themselves in speak for themselves. And if this movie ever holds back, it's likely more for legal reasons relating to the young age of the actors involved than anything else, because it is not afraid to "go there" in showing its protagonist Tracy's downward spiral, all while maintaining a sense of humanity that sympathizes with the people involved and the situation they find themselves going through. Thirteen is a tough movie to watch, and its early '00s skater-punk aesthetics are very much of their time, but a slew of great performances, particularly Wood in the role that made her career to this day, make it a near-classic.

The first third of this movie sees Tracy Freeland, a studious, hard-working seventh-grader and daughter of the hairdresser and recovering alcoholic Melanie, fall in with the popular girl Evie Zamora and experience the plot of Mean Girls on turbo speed as she ditches her frumpy "Cabbage Patch" clothes for Evie's "bad girl" fashion. Before long, however, as Evie teaches Tracy about shoplifting, petty theft, drugs, and sex, the film quickly turns into a 2000s version of Euphoria as Tracy's life starts to spiral off the rails, all while Melanie, already struggling to manage her own life and make ends meet, finds herself losing control of her family.

This is a movie that is driven heavily by aesthetic and mood, which come together with a script by Hardwicke and Reed (based on some of the latter's own experiences at that age) to create a truly raw atmosphere. Watching this movie felt like stepping back in time to the early '00s era of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater pop-punk with its distinctly Southern California vibe -- my childhood, for lack of a better term, even if I grew up three thousand miles away. Hardwicke shoots the film almost like a documentary with a handheld camera, letting the camera linger uncomfortably long on Tracy's behavior such that even her stylistic flourishes (especially a changing color palette whose increasing dreariness reflects Tracy's downward spiral) wound up feeling natural, like you're actually there bewildered by the situation as much as Tracy and the people around her. The soundtrack and score transport you right into the world of its "cool kids on the edge" in how they make Evie, her clique, and her lifestyle look badass at first. You can immediately get why Tracy would be seduced by this lifestyle, more than ever now that '00s pop-punk has made a nostalgia-fueled comeback as of late. And without getting into too much personal information, the mood and music, which colored so much of the pop culture of my own adolescence, made the plot turns that followed hit that much closer to home, as some of the people around me growing up endured very similar experiences to that of Tracy. While I kept my distance from it, I have vivid memories of what some of my classmates and relatives were like back then, and this film dredged them up in a very uncomfortable way. Let's just say, I know what people like Evie Zamora grew up to become, and I'll just leave it at that.

The other big reason why this movie hit so hard came down to the cast. Evan Rachel Wood played Tracy as somebody who seemed to realize deep down that what she was doing was wrong, growing to hate herself as much as she does her family, but at the same time, she's been locked into a dark path by Evie's bad influence. By the end, even with her more fashionable clothes, you're practically screaming at her to go back to the dweeb she was at the start of the film and cut Evie out of her life. Nikki Reed, clearly drawing on some of her own experiences, did almost too good a job making Evie into a repulsive person, like a walking pack of Joe Camel cigarettes: cool and attractive on the surface, but deeply manipulative and self-centered in ways that she teaches Tracy to imitate as their friendship deepens, to the point that, by the end, it's debatable just how much Tracy's influence is looping back on Evie and making her even worse. (I'd honestly love to see Hardwicke make a "proper" non-Twilight vampire movie with Reed, one where she plays an evil vampire who seduces the protagonist into evil.) You feel bad for Holly Hunter as Melanie, the single mom who already has enough on her plate and didn't need her "golden child" going off the rails the way she did. One look at the Freelands' home and you can tell that, while Melanie is not a perfect mother, she was dealt a terrible hand by life and is genuinely trying to rebuild her life and her family, even if she finds herself caught in the same trap as her daughter in some ways, especially with regards to her current boyfriend Brady who finds himself just as in over his head.

The Bottom Line

This is not an easy film to watch by any stretch of the imagination. It hit very close to home, and in many ways, that's a testament to how effective it still is. Check it out, but steel yourself first.