Absolutely the worst movie.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The psychological premise of the movie is familiar: two boys on the edge of puberty face a crisis in their friendship when Nicholas, the smaller and shyer boy, gives in to an erotic impulse and plants a peck of a kiss on his pal, Bobby, and Bobby recoils. Then the movie dissolves into murky surrealism. We're not sure whether the friendship is continuing -- real Bobby has been replaced by zombie Bobby, whom Nicholas hides in his bedroom and in a barn that serves as Nicholas' etymology lab. Bobby the silent zombie accepts Nicholas' gestures of care-giving, which include a bath, secretive feeding (who knew zombies need food?) and a shoulder massage. But there is no further overt affection shown except one kiss on Bobby's neck. Another introductory scene shows Bobby dragging a reluctant Nicholas to a school girl's party. The two take part in a game of spin the bottle. When it's Nicholas' turn to take a girl into a closet for a make-out scene, nothing happens except a shadowy man in long underwear pops up behind the clothes rack, apparently as a voyeur. Later on, we learn that the apparition is Nicholas' dead father, who makes a few other appearances for no clear reason.Secondary characters and choppy dialog add little to the story. We watch Nicholas' mother trying to be supportive of her son and getting little but sullenness in return. The mother's suitor gets a similar brushoff. Near the end, real Bobby hauls zombie Bobby away in a wagon while Nicholas watches. It's hard to know what to make of this scene -- they seem to be parting as friends, yet the mood suggests Nicholas has been abandoned. By this point, Nicholas has been transformed into a zombie himself, and is shown following his father's shade into an abandoned farmhouse. It is anyone's guess whether the real Nicholas is still out there somewhere or has surrendered to schizophrenic fantasy. I watched this film in a 7-part series on YouTube and I did plod through all seven segments. At the end, I wished I had tuned out after Part 3.

I hate pretentious movies that try so hard to be art that they forget to be entertaining. This movie falls into that category. I'm not really a fan of abstract surrealism at the best of times, but bleak self-loathing surrealism can just go take a jump in the lake! The trouble with symbolism is that if it needs a guide book to tell you what's going on (especially symbolism in movies where the viewer doesn't have the time to dissect every nuance), I think it fails. It just becomes a series of directorial in-jokes. I don't mind challenging film. I can stomach dark movies. But this simply failed to reward the effort.Furthermore, none of the non-surreal relationships (Nicholas and Bobby, Nicholas and his mother, mother and boyfriend) were remotely credible, so my mind was constantly tussling with the disbelief about their relationships, long before the actual surreal stuff started happening.This movie had the potential to be really worthwhile, with some mature performances from the young leads forging the way, but instead it disappeared right up its own self-indulgent rectum.Read traymasters' review above, then save yourself the time of actually watching the movie. His review is far more meaningful and lucid than the actual movie!

When we grow up we throw away our old personality we've become too big for like a snake crawls out of its old skin leaving behind a dry slough. So The Nature of Nicholas is a parable about coming of age when the boy should cast away his old, already dead nature to continue on the way into his adult life. Visual design of this drama in demonstrating this idea is absolutely unusual and innovative to the degree of becoming surreal. Don't you know the song "Lose This Skin" by The Clash: "Come with me, I thought he said, but that's not him anymore, he's dead. What's it like to be so free? So free it looks like lost to me. I've got to lose this skin I'm imprisoned in." The Nature of Nicholas is like an elaborate music video to this song.

and yet very watchable.I don't pretend to know what this film is about, I just know that it was very satisfying to watch. Some movies, a very few, leave you with that feeling, the one that says, yeah, that's what a movie should be; that's how you feel when you have watched cinema art.I know I should discuss the freudian symbolism and explain how it all fits into Freud's stages of sexual maturation, but I just can't bring myself to reduce this film to such cant.It is a mythic story, best experienced in a childlike (vs.childish)state.