By Bailey Pennick

Warning: This feature contains spoilers about the film.

Before he welcomes legendary indie director Gregg Araki to the podium to introduce a gorgeous 4K restoration of 2004’s Mysterious Skin, Sundance Institute’s John Nein muses on the visceral imagery of the film and its place within the iconic independent film canon. “The cereal dropping on the kid’s head,” he says, pausing for a moment. “That is [an image] I will never forget as long as I live.” He’s right — the gauzy, dreamlike waterfall of Froot Loops on top of an 8-year-old boy’s pristine bowl cut is instantly recognizable. Though, Nein undersells the vast amount of images within Mysterious Skin that one will never forget once seeing the film.

A young blonde boy lying down on a metallic, bumpy surface with alien hands on his face.

A charismatic little league coach taking close-up polaroids of a little leaguer with a finger in his mouth.

Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) massaging the back of a man who has AIDS while he cries in a small, white room with an enlarged reprint of Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring.”

Brian (Brady Corbet) and Eric (Jeff Licon) in an attic, trying to decipher a drawing of a half alien/half man creature that has been haunting Brian’s dreams.

Neil being raped in the tub of a dingy bathroom in New York while blood pours from his face into the drain.

Neil and Brian sitting on a lived-in cream couch, holding each other, after recounting the summer of abuse that they endured as children, as Christmas carolers sing “Silent Night.”

Mysterious Skin’s commitment to depicting the long-lasting damage that sexual abuse does to its victims — especially children — is unwavering. And the unflinching way Scott Heim’s original novel looks at the actual violence as well as its effects is what drew Araki to the project. “It was really putting the reader through this experience,” the writer-director says of the film’s source material after the Park City Legacy screening. “Scott was so brilliant in the way that he sort of incorporated all these touchstones of childhood — like universal touchstones of someone who grew up in suburbia. I grew up in Santa Barbara when I was a little kid, and just like the cereal boxes and the station wagon… like, all of that stuff, I lived with that stuff. I know all of that stuff. So you really feel like it’s your childhood being violated in this kind of unthinkable way.”

As you watch the grooming and trauma unfold, it’s nearly impossible to remove yourself from those touchstones. The way that young Neil mentions that his mom won’t buy the multi-pack of little sugary cereal boxes because they are “a waste of money” is such a common refrain in grocery store aisles around America. Seeing cereal as a tool for such evil stains the nostalgic, carefree desire for two scoops of Lucky Charms. That feeling in the pit of your stomach from the beginning of the film doesn’t subside, even after the credits roll.

“And that’s why those scenes were so important,” Araki continues. “That’s why we ended up making [Mysterious Skin] for, you know, no money. Really, it was such a labor of love for everybody, but I didn’t really want to do it otherwise.” The result is a gorgeous and unshakable look into how sexual violence and the cycle of abuse renders all sense of self-worth and identity unknowable for the victims. Mysterious Skin is a film you will not forget for as long as you live.