Summer Scars

Director: Julian Richards (2007)

Starring: Kevin Howarth, Ciaran Joyce, Amy Harvey

Find it: IMDB

Six horrible Welsh children skip school in order to fuck around in the woods on a stolen scooter. On their travels, they happen across sinister drifter Peter (Howarth) who ingratiates himself to the children by threatening bullies and acting mentally unstable in a manner that children seem to love.

Despite no budget and a cast of disgusting children, Summer Scars is a watchable cross between Stand by Me and Kidulthood. The children are incessantly unbearable, as is the movie's villain, but  there is some gold in them there Welsh hills. Not much. Maybe the equivalent of a fiver or so in change. But it's a lot more than I'd expected.

Nasty bastard Peter (Howarth) is the woodland-dwelling weirdo. At first he seems like a friendly natured sort of tramp, letting the children punch him in the face and play with his pellet gun. A bit like the training levels in Bully (Canus Canem Edit) where a tramp teaches you kung-fu skills by letting you kick the shit out of him. Only Bingo (Joyce) takes it too far, breaking Peter's not-the-face rule. One of the brats is shot up the nose with the pellet gun and all hell breaks loose. The already creepy atmosphere becomes almost unbearable when Peter starts demanding to see the kids' pubes.

It's a grim and uncomfortable tale, naturalistic in its direction and the acting. Kevin Howarth is suitably horrible as the terrible tramp. I could almost see it as a Shane Meadows film, starring the brats from Eden Lake and Paddy Considine. It's not that good, but it could have been. The children are loathsome, so it's admirable that you end up rooting for them. However, I have a very low tolerance for whining, crying children, so I still hated Summer Scars quite a lot. If they'd finished the film by killing both the children and the dangerous drifter, I would have been a happy bunny. As it is, the climax is predictable but fitting.

There's an old kids' TV show called Tracy Beaker here in England in which Ciaran Joyce plays a chavvy fuck who goes around playing 'hilarious' 'pranks' on the other kids in his orphanage. I couldn't take him at all seriously in this, playing would-be hard nut Bingo. Amy Harvey is the least irritating person in the film, and even she is fairly irritating.

Despite its considerable flaws, Summer Scars is tense, chilling and surprisingly decent. Grim as it becomes, I couldn't quite turn it off. It has an oddly magnetic quality.

I wasn't scarred by the film itself. That poster, on the other hand...