Directed by Gus Van Sant, and told through a letter,
Paranoid Park is the story of a young (at a guess, 16 or 17) skater who accidentally kills a security guard, and what has happened in his life after it as he struggles to come to terms with what he has done. There's nothing complicated about the story itself, the lead, Alex, sometimes stumbles over his words as he reads aloud, but it jumps a lot through different timeframes, repeating scenes as he struggles to piece together what has happened - 'I was never very good at creative writing'.
It has one of the most horrifying scenes I've ever seen. Forget monsters and full on gore, this was just plain disturbing. I actually choked on my popcorn. It is a bit gory, but its the sheer horror of what is actually happening itself at the scene of the security guard's death.
What’s great about it is that we don’t see the archetypal skater boy - we meet a shy, nervous boy who's messed up, but tries to keep it...
