As a genre, "Teen Noir Thriller" wasn’t even in the vocabulary until a couple years ago when Brick deftly handled the teen scene, making it feel grown up and just as seedy as any hard-boiled crime yarn – with a fun oratorical twist to boot.
I’d venture to say we’ll be seeing more and more of this genre over the next few years (good idea or not) and, thanks to the recent funding of film house Frequency Films, we’ve got another addition to the highly specialized category.
JH Wyman, scribe of the announced Tony Scott Warriors remake, has created a spec script called NC-17. That’s kind of weird title considering everything NC-17 has attached to it, and the fact that the plot follows a squad of seventeen year olds who turn to a life of crime. JH Wyman is set to direct the project, which will begin filming before the end of year.
So Brick played a hand in birthing the genre, but I’m still trying to wrap some gray lobe around how filmmakers might build on it. It’s fresh and new, and can play into all kinds of parallels and angst-ridden themes, which I can only hope dilutes the whole Emo thing going on right now. But the projects that typically christen the genre are generally the ones that perfect it. I guess it all ends up being proved in the tone of the material, but despite Brick‘s promise, teen noir invariably feels like an unavoidable flash in the pan.