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Arousing success: the year's best slasher flick exposes teenagers as never before.

Article Excerpt
The boldest Texas-set movie of 2007 begins on the first day of school, when all the cool kids take off for a party hosted by blond-haired jock Dylan (Adam Powell). The boys swill booze and smoke pot. The girls strut around in barely there bikinis. We watch Dylan try to seduce the elusive beauty Mandy Lane (Amber Heard), whispering filthy nothings into her ear. We watch Mandy give him the brush-off, with a coldly turned shoulder that only entices him more. The director, Jonathan Levine, films all of this with a sensuousness that borders on the lascivious: The images are slowed down; the lighting is artfully washed out. Even the melancholy indie rock music on the sound track suggests a kind of Abercrombie-inspired daydream from which we'd never want to wake.

And then, well, so much for that daydream: In the very next scene, Mandy's jealous friend Emmet (Michael Welch) goads Dylan into leaping from the roof of the house into the swimming pool in order to impress Mandy. At...