The Chumscrubber

The Chumscrubber takes place in an affluent American suburb where the adults are absorbed in their own lives and the teenagers drift largely unsupervised. Dean Stiffle discovers that his friend Troy, who supplied drugs to students at the local high school, has died. Rather than tell any of the adults, Dean keeps the news to himself, believing they would not care or would prefer not to know. When other students learn what happened, they pressure Dean to lead them to Troy's hidden supply. A group of classmates hatches a plan to force his cooperation by abducting his younger brother, Charlie, though the scheme goes wrong when they take the wrong boy.

Arie Posin directed the film from a screenplay he wrote with Zac Stanford. It was his first feature, made before The Face of Love and The In Between, and its cast includes Jamie Bell as Dean, Camilla Belle, Justin Chatwin, Rory Culkin and Glenn Close. Lawrence Bender, Bonnie Curtis and Susanne Bohnet produced the Germany-Canada-United States co-production on a budget of about 7 million dollars.

Audience responses have been moderately favorable: on IMDb it holds 6.8/10 from roughly 20,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.5/10 from a much smaller group of 229 votes. A film critics' rating of 5.3/10 from 59 reviews places it below both audience measures.