Day 188: Mean Creek

Five kids decide to play a prank on a bully but it gets out of hand and they must decide what they’re going to do.

The bully, George (Josh Peck), beats up Sam (Rory Culkin), and it seems to be a regular occurrence. In order to get back at him, Sam’s brother and some of his friends decide to play a prank on George. They invite him out for Sam’s birthday and they go out on a boat. The plan is to play Truth or Dare and eventually dare George to strip and jump in the river, at which time they’d take off and he’d have to run home naked. But once they actually get to talking to George, most of them end up seeing that he’s not all bad. He has his problems and it’s clear he just wants friends. They want to go back on the plan but Marty (Scott Mechlowicz) wants to stick with it. It eventually leads to a fight on the boat and George provokes Marty by talking about his father who killed himself. He just keeps pushing and pushing and so Sam’s brother knocks him overboard to make him stop. Then I’m not really sure what happened. It looked like he couldn’t swim and then he hit his head. They try to save him but it’s too late. They’re all involved because they planned this and they all played the game despite knowing how it was going to end. Marty takes charge and says they need to bury him and act like nothing happened. They do it and take off home but the rest of them can’t let it go and so they decide to come clean.

Trying to get back at the bully isn’t a bad thing in itself. Sure, it doesn’t really achieve anything but if you’ve been bullied, it can help you feel not quite so helpless. And the prank itself wasn’t exactly that awful. They could’ve decided to hurt him rather than just embarrass him, so I think it was a relatively tame prank. It was good to see the side to George that explained his behaviour and the effect it had on the kids. It made sense that they’d not want to go through with the plan after getting to know him a bit and, after he makes aggressive comments, it makes sense that they’d want to play the game after all. They understand why he does what he does but the comments still hurt and they want to get back at him. If he’d been saying those things to me, I’m not sure I’d be able to stop myself from pushing him in the river too. I think it’s interesting that even though we can understand why someone would act a certain way, we’re still hurt by it.

7/10