Stand By Me

Journey back down the tracks with Stand by Me, a mid-century folktale from Stephen King’s less spooky side, brought to life by director Rob Reiner.

“You guys wanna go see a dead body?” 

In the summer of 1959, four small-town preteens (played by Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell) set out on a morbid odyssey: a two-day trek to find the remains of a missing teenager.

Evading a vicious dog, hungry leeches and local hoods (led by a fearsome Keifer Sutherland) along the way, the group’s grim pilgrimage plays out like a wistful folktale about the fleeting intensity of childhood friendship.

Few films capture the strange mix of sweetness and sorrow of adolescence like Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me. One of Hollywood’s best-loved portraits of boyhood, the story adapts Stephen King at his most naturalistic, skipping the supernatural for something just as haunting: growing up.

Set in a child’s world where adults hover only at the margins, the film’s sun-soaked nostalgia is elevated by the special alchemy of its young cast (especially River Phoenix, soulful beyond his years), who together transform the simple coming-of-age quest into a beautifully bittersweet meditation on the bonds of youth.