Bully

Prior to this, I’d only seen one movie by Larry Clark, the horrifying and uncomfortable Kids. Clark’s Kids was stark, hyper-realistic, bleak, and emotionally oppressive, drowning the viewer in hedonism and making the viewer a helpless voyeur into the downward spiral of teenagers with no sense of mortality or consequences. It is a breathtaking movie, feeling a little too real and yet real all the same (especially if you were a kid in the 90’s), but it’s also heavier than Jupiter’s gravity. You don’t watch Kids for fun. I expected something like that with Bully, and while it’s definitely as unflinching and brutal in its depiction of nihilistic teens with no value of human life or each other, the feeling I came away with wasn’t revulsion, but sadness. It is a true story, and a hopeless one. The movie’s core characters have one thing in common — a bully named Bobby. He is the best friend of Marty, although Bobby abuses him physically and mentally. He is caustic and selfish, manipulative, scheming, and selfish. He commits sexual assaults on two girls, one being Marty’s girlfriend Lisa, and one on Lisa’s friend. Fed up with his behavior, the friends decide the best way to deal with Bobby is to kill him, and they recruit more friends to help. Before that can happen, though, you spend a lot of time with these characters, and that’s where this movie drags a lot. These aren’t enjoyable characters. They are the worst embodiment of wild teens, amped up to 11. They care only about scoring the next high or getting laid, they abuse each other and treat each other in ways no friends should, and they have no value for life as a concept or as a fact. Bobby stands heads and shoulders above them as worse, yes, but nobody here is good. The movie never answers why any of them didn’t consider just cutting Bobby out of their lives. I suppose the idea is that they’re all, for the most part, drop-outs and burn-outs, so none of them possess critical thinking skills, but the fact that when they get to their boiling point murder is a valid solution is a little much. But I will also give points for the fact that, despite these kids being targets of Bobby’s cruelty, the movie never paints them as righting a wrong here. They are idiots, morally bankrupt, treating the idea of murder with a frivolous, dispassionate glee. Even after they do it, several of them are so cavalier, they brag about it to others like an accomplishment that everybody does. It is hard to watch sometimes, but it is consistent, I’ll give it that. And the movie never, ever flinches in its dedication to harsh reality. There is no storybook ending. There is no great moral lesson here. Bully is a true story about kids who were pushed too far, but pushed back too far as well. Nobody is right here, and the movie never lets you forget. The other flaw the movie has is dragging out the pre-murder planning and aborted attempts. It’s all part of the story, sure, but it takes 2/3’s of the runtime for the murder to happen, and the crime is very much not some Ocean’s Eleven criminal masterpiece. Toddlers have more intricate plans than what’s on display here. It’s hard not to feel the minutes in the second act. The third act picks things back up as everyone deals with the aftermath of the murder in different ways, but getting there can be a lot. Bully is not a movie to watch for a fun snuggle on the couch movie night. It is cold, it is raw, it is hostile, and it is unpleasant. It revels in the debauchery of the teens. It will shock you, but it doesn’t do it for the sake of shock value. These kids are just that terrible. But it is a hell of a watch. Maybe, like Kids, though, a one time watch.