Hardwicke's and Reed's mature teen drama, constructed from Reed's experience, is developed as an adolescent character analysis that ends up being highly distressing, poignantly gritty, extremely unpleasant and unbelievably intense. Thirteen admittedly looks exactly like your average teen/coming-of-age story to deal and send a message about drugs, theft, sex and peer pressure during adolescence, but surprisingly, it's not.

The story centres on the average 13-year-old girl who isn't too matured until she is lead to the "cool-girl" lifestyle involving lots of mature subject matter for the movie by her new friend who identifies as the hottest and coolest girl at her school. This is an adolescent story of teenage peer pressure with lots of explicit language, drug and alcohol use, sexual references and grown-up teenage content that floods most teen movies, either dramas or comedies.

However, viewers should definitely keep in mind the fact that the themes in Thirteen shift more towards the heavy drama side, consisting of extremely gritty topics that will even have a powerful impact on mature audiences and adults. The ending certainly marks as the most traumatic experience out of the film, because unlike so many other teen movies, there's absolutely no answers and while it doesn't exactly leave off on an irritating cliffhanger, the conflict is never properly resolved. Thirteen will leave you with an unbelievable amount of unanswered questions and thoughts.

Throughout this movie, you can clearly tell that there were no tripods used for the camera and most of it was just recorded by hand. Some will probably see this as a little nauseating, but it perfectly suits the movie's visual tone and somehow manages to increase the intensity of the subject matter, notably at the end. The teenage and adult actresses are also mind-blowing in this movie. Their performances are shockingly lifelike and only few casts can achieve this effect. There is no single cast member who wasn't outstanding in this movie, even in the little roles that come and go.

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I don't want to miss the point of this film. I know the point of it is the pressures on today's adolescents, and their reactions to some of those pressures, and the effects on families in those circumstances. And if you're going to illustrate those points then you have to show cause and effect, and that means unpleasantness, and shouting matches, and drugs, and manipulation, and under-age sex and so on. You have to have those things in the movie, I get it.

But for the film to have the impact it should have, you need to care about those people. You have to see the possibility of redemption in them (even if the film is a tragedy, whereby they fail to be redeemed, the possibility must be there). And we never really saw enough of Tracy before peer pressure kicked in and changed her to an obnoxious brat going off the rails to have any sort of opinion as to whether she was redeemable or not.

I thought the performances were good (if a little one-note in places), but the script was underdeveloped. Nikki Reed shows some promise as both (co-)writer and performer, but needs rather more guidance than she got here in both areas.

This movie really made me realize how difficult parenting can be, and how horrible a life can be for teenagers.

This movie really portrays the Problems present today in teenagers that we ignore. The movie is very well directed and will really make you feel it's passion and realistic Drama.