Movies like this force you to learn geography. We gather it is set near the Salton Sea, but what is "the Salton Sea?" Well it turns out the Salton Sea is a California State Recreation area, about a 3-hour drive southeast of Los Angeles. The lake's salinity, about 44 g/L, is greater than that of the waters of the Pacific Ocean. From the website:
"One of the world's largest inland seas and lowest spots on earth at -227 below sea level, Salton Sea was created in 1905 when high spring flooding on the Colorado River crashed the canal gates leading into the developing Imperial Valley. For the next 18 months the entire volume of the Colorado River rushed downward into the Salton Trough. By the time engineers were finally able to stop the breaching water in 1907, the Salton Sea had been born at 45 miles long and 20 miles wide – equaling about 130 miles of shoreline. "
So that's where two teenage friends live, Juno Temple (21 during filming) as Lily Hobart and Kay Panabaker (20 during filming) as Alison Hoffman. Both were playing girls of about 15 or 16, in this run-down, dry, ugly place. Plus they each had lost parents and lived without the trappings of normal teenagers.
Lily and Alison couldn't be more different. Lily was sassy, rebellious, and always looking to the side for a different experience. Like standing on the tracks to see how close the approaching train could get before she jumped off. Alison was more serious, polite, and followed normal conventions.
Their lives changed when one day they came upon several boys using an empty, abandoned swimming pool as a skateboard park, remarking "You could never find a place like this in Los Angeles." One of the boys, who seemed nice, gave Lily his phone number, just in case she ever made it to Los Angeles.
They did make it there, Lily who couldn't drive talked Alison into "borrowing" a pickup truck of an adult friend, but they found that the boys didn't really have a home there, they were squatting in an abandoned motel. And, they were not so nice, dragging the two girls into their schemes.
This isn't a pretty movie, but it shows what can happen when kids throw caution to the wind and get mixed up with the wrong people.
SPOILERS: The boys cooked up a scheme, they would use Lily as "bait", advertising her online and then when she brought men into the secluded space mug and rob them. The first one worked, but the second one didn't, a fight broke out, the man angry decided to get what he came for and began to rape Lily. Then a shot rang out, as the camera slowly pans we see Alison, who had left but came back for her friend. As the movie ends they are back home, at the Salton Sea, their lives changed.
"One of the world's largest inland seas and lowest spots on earth at -227 below sea level, Salton Sea was created in 1905 when high spring flooding on the Colorado River crashed the canal gates leading into the developing Imperial Valley. For the next 18 months the entire volume of the Colorado River rushed downward into the Salton Trough. By the time engineers were finally able to stop the breaching water in 1907, the Salton Sea had been born at 45 miles long and 20 miles wide – equaling about 130 miles of shoreline. "
So that's where two teenage friends live, Juno Temple (21 during filming) as Lily Hobart and Kay Panabaker (20 during filming) as Alison Hoffman. Both were playing girls of about 15 or 16, in this run-down, dry, ugly place. Plus they each had lost parents and lived without the trappings of normal teenagers.
Lily and Alison couldn't be more different. Lily was sassy, rebellious, and always looking to the side for a different experience. Like standing on the tracks to see how close the approaching train could get before she jumped off. Alison was more serious, polite, and followed normal conventions.
Their lives changed when one day they came upon several boys using an empty, abandoned swimming pool as a skateboard park, remarking "You could never find a place like this in Los Angeles." One of the boys, who seemed nice, gave Lily his phone number, just in case she ever made it to Los Angeles.
They did make it there, Lily who couldn't drive talked Alison into "borrowing" a pickup truck of an adult friend, but they found that the boys didn't really have a home there, they were squatting in an abandoned motel. And, they were not so nice, dragging the two girls into their schemes.
This isn't a pretty movie, but it shows what can happen when kids throw caution to the wind and get mixed up with the wrong people.
SPOILERS: The boys cooked up a scheme, they would use Lily as "bait", advertising her online and then when she brought men into the secluded space mug and rob them. The first one worked, but the second one didn't, a fight broke out, the man angry decided to get what he came for and began to rape Lily. Then a shot rang out, as the camera slowly pans we see Alison, who had left but came back for her friend. As the movie ends they are back home, at the Salton Sea, their lives changed.