August 13, 2026
I can’t explain myself, but I never watched Gregg Araki’s acclaimed 2004 film Mysterious Skin until now that it’s being re-released 20+ years later in a long-awaited 4K upgrade.
How could I have avoided a film based on Scott Heim’s 1995 novel, which was published at the same time my own first novel, Boy Culture? Scott and I were in touch at the time, and have been since. It just makes no sense. I must have been super busy with my teen magazine and then convinced myself I had seen it, since I for sure read Scott’s mesmerizing, original novel more than once.
Via the new print, I was able to finally take in this boldly envisioned, super disturbing example of guerrilla filmmaking — one that was made for peanuts in less than two weeks, yet that retains its gut-punch quality all these years later, after so many other daring films have been made.
Even today, with so, so much focus on child sexual abuse — thanks, Epstein Files — Mysterious Skin tackles the issue fearlessly.
The story follows two boys as they grow into young men. As 8-year-olds in the early ‘80s, they played on the same Little League team coached by a spookily attentive drifter (Bill Sage), and they clearly shared something darker.
What they do not share is the same perspective on the summer that changed everything.
Precocious Neil (Chase Ellison/Joseph Gordon-Levitt) remembers all too clearly being groomed and relentlessly molested by Coach. Its effect on him was confusing but sexualizing — he eventually spends his teen years as a James Dean-style teen hustler in their small hometown of Hutchinson, Kansas, even as AIDS rages on. Any anger he feels toward Coach is overwhelmed by his fetishizing of what it felt like to be — this is how it seemed to the latch-key kid at the time — so valued, so loved. He even has mementos from his abuse, and uses the memory of it to get off.
Painfully introverted Brian (George Webster/Brady Corbet) remembers almost nothing at all, just two black-out experiences he comes to build in his mind into possible alien-abduction episodes. Hidden, or attempting to hide, behind gigantic Coke-bottle glasses, he turns to lurid TV shows and the local library to try to jog his memory, striking up a mixed-signals friendship with Avalyn (Mary Lynn Rajskub), a fellow alien abductee. All his hard work on himself is leading him back to Neil, even as Neil runs as far as he can from their hometown, rooming with his childhood friend Wendy (Michelle Trachtenberg) in NYC.
The scenes in New York are brutal, including an emotionally draining encounter between Neil and a john covered in KS lesions and a brutal rape that looks distressingly real.
Mysterious Skin fearlessly explores aspects of child sexual abuse — often rather graphically — that are uncomfortable to contemplate, and I’m not sure another film before or since has been brave enough to depict the subject visually, albeit in carefully constructed and edited scenes to protect the young actors.
The result is a transformational take on the subject.
Though there are signs of its budgetary and scheduling concerns (Brian’s mom feels like she’s in a John Waters movie, yet Neil’s mom is an earthy, incandescently burned-out Elisabeth Shue), Mysterious Skin’s episodic structure is highly effective. The shoestring vibe plus Araki’s eye make it at once artful and vérité.
If the film is searing, it is due to the parallel performances of Gordon-Levitt, whose character’s inner life throbs from every frame he’s in, and Corbet, who exudes aching vulnerability.
In some ways, Neil and Brian are like the negative and positive of a single image. They are twins, but instead of DNA, they share trauma; and neither has a clue how to handle it.
Nor do we, really, as an audience; there are no pat answers offered.
All we can do is absorb the slowly unfurling nightmare and hope that when the film comes to an end, the characters we have come to empathize with and even love may be on the verge of finding the closure they need and deserve.
But don’t bet on it.⚡️
Mysterious Skin opens at IFC Center August 14, at Alamo DTLA & Laemmle NoHo 7 August 21, and Landmark Nuart Theatre August 28.
I've been thinking about this movie a lot lately but it isn't one i necessarily planned to watch again but maybe this is the moment! thanks for the reminder that it's back in cinemas in a restored version. love that Gregg Araki is once again being appreciated and may be finding new/younger audiences!
Great movie, the novel by Scott Heim is even better, a genuine cult classic.