B-

Anyone who was impressed by “Manic,” the gritty but essentially formulaic film about a juvenile psychiatric facility that appeared earlier this year, should be equally taken by “Thirteen,” Cathleen Hardwicke’s story about a good adolescent girl who goes off the rails under the baleful influence of a manipulative classmate. The picture is actually little more than a cautionary tale of the kind that used to be broadcast on network afterschool specials before the broadcasters’ commitment to educational programming ran up against budgetary constraints. But it’s presented in a gruff, in-your-face style–complete with jerky, hand-held camera movements and bleached-out visuals–that gives it a surface intensity and edge, camouflaging the basically predictable narrative trajectory.

Evan Rachel Wood gives a strong, risky performance as Tracy, an L.A. seventh-grader who yearns to be accepted among the cool girls in her class. She comes from a broken home in which her mother Melanie (Holly Hunter) is more anxious to be her chum than an authority figure and sometimes seems more concerned with the well-being of her affable druggie boyfriend (Jeremy Sisto) than her children. Meanwhile her absent dad is too wrapped up in his new job even to make his scheduled visitations. Under the circumstances it’s easy to understand why Tracy falls under the spell of slinky, seductive Evie (Nikki Reed), a mature-for-her-years reputed bad girl who invites her into her catty clique. It seems to take only minutes of association with the group for Tracy to abandon her generally wholesome persona and begin experimenting with shoplifting, petty theft, drugs, fooling around, and sluttish accessorizing. She will even–oh, horror!–go in for tattoos and body-piercing. And, of course, she becomes ever more sullen, rebellious and argumentative–even self-destructive and suicidal; one can only imagine the effect on her schoolwork. Melanie, who’s burdened with all sorts of other difficulties, can’t handle what’s happening, especially since the conniving Evie takes advantage of her penchant for accepting sob stories to move into their house, where she can continue the malign refashioning of her naive chum even more efficiently. It doesn’t take very long for Tracy to hit rock bottom and the need for serious intervention to become apparent.

“Thirteen” works better than this precis might suggest, because Hardwicke, a veteran production designer, uses all the devices one can imagine to maintain a tense, harsh atmosphere and give the story a visual heft that it wouldn’t otherwise have; the effect sometimes seems merely hectoring (the flaw that beset Jordan Meladmed’s “Manic”), but she doesn’t take the approach quite as far as he did. She’s also blessed with a fine cast. Wood rightly dominates things, with Reed impressive as well; and they work splendidly together, whether engaging in a drugged-out game of “Hit me!” in Tracy’s bedroom or trying to seduce a lankily handsome neighbor (Kip Pardue). Brady Corbett does a nice job as Tracy’s older brother as well–initially interested in Evie but increasingly concerned about Tracy as things spiral out of control. The adults don’t fare nearly as well. Hunter gives what’s quite a raw, fearless performance, but she’s hampered by the fact that the script doesn’t flesh Melanie out, leaving her a rather passive, reactive figure. Sisto, similarly, creates an amiable deadbeat, but not much more than that, and D.W. Moffett is even more spineless as Tracy’s wayward father. The picture would have been stronger had the adults been, too.

A good deal of the talk about “Thirteen” will doubtlessly center on the fact that its script is the work of Hardwicke and Reed, based on the latter’s own experiences. Knowledge of that gives the piece a greater sense of authenticity than it otherwise might have. One suspects, though, that shaping the story to meet the needs of the screen has led to a good deal of simplification and sp,e dramatic invention. What the result possesses is visceral power and hard-hitting style; what it lacks is a sense of subtlety and detail. It’s a very good piece of rather easy didacticism, but it doesn’t go much beyond that.