The number thirteen has always been considered unlucky. Between Friday the 13th and the lack of the 13th floor in select hotels and office buildings it has always gotten a bad rap. The film debut of writer/director Catherine Hardwicke and actor/writer Nikki Reed, is one more thing to add to the list.

The film about troubled teens tries desperately hard to be deep, moving and shocking, however I found it to be none of those things. Maybe I'm just a jaded 22 year old but I did not find anything the girls did to be that surprising. Face piercing, drinking, drugging and fucking with a pinch of self mutilation and lies, lies, lies are nothing new to today's generation.

Evan RachelWood gives a solid performance as Tracy, our hapless protagonist, but I didn't feel for her, nor her newfound buttbuddy, Evie. (15 year old co-writer Nikki Reed) We all have felt insecure during our adolescence. And lord knows junior high sucks balls. Tracy begins to treat her friends like shit, she suddenly starts sucking at school all for the approval of these stupid hos at school. We see her take out her frustration on everyone, but it blocks us off from how she is really feeling. She's not just taking shit out on her mother, she's spreading the misery. We've seen all of this behavior in our own lives, and it's not too hard to see through this and genuinely feel for this person, to understand what they're going through and to want to reach out and give them a hug. But I just wanted to walk away from this girl. I felt like I was watching a two hour long episode of Jenny Jones that's about moms and their wild daughters. Only these girls did not get sent to a boot camp, and there were no commercials to help give us time to fully take in everything we'd seen.

Tracy has this um, how should we say, loose mom, Melanie (who also happens to be really hot), who is literally and metaphorically there for her. She's a few nickels short of a dime bag, but what she lacks in intellect she makes up for in friendliness. She's a bit out of it, but she means well and does the best that a dimwitted slag can do. Melanie makes the mistake that a lot of mothers make - attempting to be the daughter's friend, instead of parent. Depending on ones upbringing this can be seen as inexcusably intrusive or a void-filling gift. Even if we do not condone Melanie's behavior, Hardwicke makes it clear that Melanie is trying working with what she has to make her daughter's life better.

One can argue that by taking Melanie's side there would be no way for me to feel any pity for Tracy. However, there are many works where we often begin to feel for the "bad guy," (i.e. Peter Lorre in Fritz Lang's M , Sean Penn in Dead Man Walking) and that did not happen in this film. Perhaps comparing a troubled self-conscious preteen with a child murderer and rapist/murderer seems incredibly uneven. However, in M and Dead Man, we believe it, we end up feeling for the characters despite the heinous crimes they have committed. Their words are genuine, and while this does not absolve them, it does add a dimension to their character. Tracy lies her way through the entire story: to her family, her teachers, herself. Why the hell should we believe her? . .

There are several sociological aspects of the film that were fascinating, yet seemed to be looked over by the filmmaker. One could site sexism as Tracy's brother, Mason, seems to be the most mature and balanced person in the film; he's more Tracy's parent than sibling. And while siblings raised in the same household often have converse demeanors and pressure on girls (although not necessarily more or less) often differs from boys, is it really possible that this kid could have gone through the same shit and come out zestfully clean? I mean maybe they're working on a sequel where Mason goes nuts and shoots up his high school, but for us to only get a limited (and very chaste) view of this person isn't fair to the audience.

We do get to see the father, a total scumbag workaholic who interrupts his once-a-decade visit with his daughter to take a work call (think Zack Morris' dad on Saved by the Bell). Although the female roles were more challenging, it is male Mason who is the most accessible. I couldn't help but remark to my friend Sophie, that perhaps this film was the reason there weren't a lot of roles written for women.

Halfway through the film Tracy says, "If everyone married someone from a different race there would be no prejudice." Even though this idea is incredibly flawed and untrue, I felt it's put in as away to redeem Tracy and her idea of loving and accepting others -e veryone, as she wants to be accepted. However during Tracy's skanky behavior she hooks up with several black and hispanic boys. The only white boy she tries to get with rejects her advances. Race relations are not only ignored, but mocked. Tracy's sexual and drug-induced relationships with minorities are nothing more than a part of her descent into depravity. Here is this white girl who comes from a broken family, yet she really sinks low by becoming "ghetto." There is no doubt that her rebellion is considered hazardous and unhealthy, therefore it is impossible to see her urbanization as something other than dangerous.

Melanie's on-again-off-again cokehead boyfriend, Brady, is touchingly played by Jeremy Sisto, who most of us know as Billy on Six Feet Under (a brilliant show that does not deserve to be mentioned alongside anything having to do with this film, unless we are talking about its script's burial place). Brady appears to be the one of the more sane characters, but I guess compared to Billy, how could you not appear normal?

The camera work was more obvious than Lara Flynn Boyle's eating disorder. During on of the fight scenes, the camera begins to rock side to side, like a ship on rough waters. Oh my god, there's turmoil in the house? I had no fucking idea, but thank you so much for clarifying.

The appearance of the film became more and more bleak as if to represent the view Tracy grows to have on herself and her life. It's a great effect and it certainly gives the film another dimension, however there is very little to that keeps us attached to the film in the first place. If the characters are unappealing (and not even interestingly so) and we begin to feel distant from this world we're supposed to be a part of, there is nothing holding us in. This does work in the sense that apathy towards human behavior and emotion and the future exudes from the screen and wraps us up in a blanket of nonchalant lethargy. I began not to give a shit, which I'm sure is how Tracy felt as well.

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