My review of the film:

Enjoy!

http://2or3thingsiknowaboutfilm.blogspot.com/2013/04/mysterious-skin-2 004-gregg-araki.html

An excerpt:

Neil is a tragedy in the making, used to concealing his deepest pains and regrets under the guise of the cocky, ball-busting hustler persona he presents when out cruising. But even his sexual experiences can't go off without a hitch; there is the scene where he feels Richard Riehle's Charlie (more specifically, Charlie's teeth) get a bit too close for comfort (shortly after this experience, he discovers that he has crabs) and the scene where he finds his assurance contested by a client (John Ganun) who cannot believe the gall of a young teenage dunce who doesn't even bother bringing, let alone using, his own condoms. He is the opposite of Brady Corbet's Brian, who is aware that something terrible, something that cannot be rationalised, happened to him as a child and who has graduated from being a hypersensitive youngster to an awkward high school nerd whose sensitivity can be felt resonating in every second you spend staring into his sad, blue eyes. As Levitt's polar opposite, Corbet hits similar heights (and his success playing this shattered soul has allowed him to succeed playing other tortured, even morally ambiguous characters on the indie circuit this past decade). Not a drop of the pain these characters inhabit feels at all inorganic or forced. And with Araki at the helm, their moral dilemmas, as well as their desire for peace, are communicated brilliantly, without a second's misrepresentation of the message at hand.

The film benefits from a beautiful soundtrack (and never before has the music of Sigur Ros been used to such devastating effect) and beautiful cinematography that captures the blankness of the Kansas landscape to chilling effect. Yet the film unfolds slowly (in layers, much like an onion) so that the bleakness of the location doesn't hit home so powerfully until you've been watching for quite some time (unlike a film like, let's say, Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show, which is horrifying to watch precisely because the location is exactly as empty and draining as the characters claim from the second you have your first look at it during the opening credits). There is also excellent support from Mary Lynn Rajskub as a young woman who believes she may have been abducted by aliens (and who serves as Brian's first introduction into the sad truth that may be his life; Rajskub is almost ethereal in her presence, existing in a space where only her feet are reminded of her existence on this earth, which is exactly how her broken Avalyn seems to live, if she even lives at all. The biggest surprise for me, interestingly enough, is Elisabeth Shue as Mrs. McCormick, who does what a great actor is able to do: communicate so much with only a glance, with only the simplest of gestures. Mrs. McCormick knows that something happened to her son, but she can't seem to put her finger on it. And if she has, then the prospect is too frightening for her to admit. The love she has for her child transcends any of her past mistakes--the scene where she holds on to her son at the bus station before he boards his ride to New York, where she breathlessly whispers

You'll always be my baby. Don't you ever forget that.

is astounding in its raw power. This is truly one of the great unsung 'background performances,' one that manages to assault the gut with a subtlety that often goes unnoticed.