The Water's Edge is a sensitively directed feature-length drama set in a small town where everybody knows everybody and nobody forgets. The local kids refer to it as a "hellhole", but in many cases it’s a hell of their own making. The movie unfolds like an engrossing young-adult novel, as it explores the consequences of groupthink and separating from the herd.
The film has a very heavy tone, leavened somewhat by vivid performances delivered by its young cast. Most of the action takes place one year after Brian Dockett drowned in the lake under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind a wife, Karyn (Sherri Small Truitt), and two teenage children, Courtney (Laura Evans) and Royce (Matt Hensarling).
Courtney’s life is a living hell. The kids at school spit in her food, give her wedgies and throw her books in the toilet. At first it seems unrealistic that such a pretty girl would get picked on so much, but then we find out why. One night Royce and his friends went waterskiing and Courtney narced on them. Since then, she’s been persona non grata. It’s easy to see why Royce would be upset with her. Even so, it’s hard to think of a big brother being so unforgiving and heartless to his sister.
Things start looking up for Courtney when a new girl moves into town. The kids say she’s the first person to move there in years. (They live in a small town in Texas.) This doesn’t exactly jibe with what we see onscreen. All the kids seem to come from middle-class families, they can afford expensive waterskiing equipment, and their school seems clean and nice enough. This isn’t the kind of economic desperation seen on the TV series Friday Night Lights. At any rate, the new girl is named Ashley (Amanda Anderson) and she and Courtney become fast friends. Ashley stands up for her in a way that Royce doesn’t, and Courtney becomes convinced that her B.F.F. might be some kind of angel.
The Water’s Edge is fairly reactionary when it comes to teen partying; seems like every time someone takes a sip of alcohol they end up dead in the lake. Despite some melodramatic overtones, it’s impossible not to get caught up in these characters’ lives. The Dockett house has a very lived-in quality. The dead father was an artist, and you can see the bursts of creativity he left behind in the colors of the house and the unfinished garage out front. Hensarling (from Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation) and Evans are given a considerable task in making this brother-sister relationship believable, and they succeed admirably. Anderson has an angelic quality as Ashley, and Robert Wilson is scary as Jason, a psycho teen straight out of Larry Clark’s Bully.
It takes a tragedy to bring this community back together again. The film’s theme is about sacrificing for the greater good, and it could be read as a Christian allegory.
