Ken Park
Teen skater Ken Park (nicknamed Krap Nek; his name spelled and pronounced backward) kills himself at a Visalia skate park; his death bookends the lives of four other young people who knew him: Shawn, the most conventional; Tate brims with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother; and Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.
This is a deeply unsettling and raw exploration of adolescent lives on the fringes. It feels like an unvarnished, often uncomfortable, look into fractured homes and the search for connection amidst profound alienation. A confrontational slow-burn that lingers long after viewing.
