GouramiWatcher Dawn Cottrell is a pretty, artistic girl who is just trying to fit into high school. Her one problem is that she suffers from a phenomenon known as 'self mutilation' where she injures herself by slashing at her skin to relieve stress. Not only is school difficult for Dawn, but her home life is less to be desired. She has an ignorant mother who poorly understands Dawn and her problem, a father who she can barely identify with and a brother who she does not see eye to eye with. Dawn later seeks help from a psychiatrist who assists to ease her pain.Secret Cutting depicts a topic that is in need of understanding, as self mutilation is often seen as taboo and as attention seeking. The film portrays 'cutters' to be sexually promiscuous, unstable and to live in dysfunctional families.Despite the flawed story line, Sean Young, Kimberlee Peterson and Rhea Pearlman were excellent actors.

Ivana Karolina As a recovering self injurer of eleven years, I had high hopes for this film. What could have been a film that brought awareness to this difficult issue, Secret Cutting was an over-dramatized mess. Dawn was portrayed as the friendless school loser, which is frankly a stereotype I'm tired of seeing. The thing about a lot of self injurers is that they can be the girl/guy next door, the very last person you would ever expect. Furthermore, the portrayal of the actual self injury was more like an addict shooting up heroin, and at times, Dawn seemed almost insane. People who self harm are not crazy, not suicidal, and are not rushed to the hospital every week for life threatening self inflicted injuries (excepting of course the most extreme cases). I can't be the only one who is tired of film makers taking the easy way out for the sake of the added drama. In the mean time, unless you're looking for some over the top theatrics, hold out for a time when someone who actually cares about the issue decides to make a real movie.

XxSnowWhiteQueenxX In my opinion this is a great movie and it has become one of my favorites.In general i am usually against made for TV movies but this one really got me. *May contain spoilers* When it comes to Self Injury(cutting,burning,etc.) i am extremely critical of movies that contain the issue.Most of the time Self Injury is represented completely wrong.That always upsets me but this movie was actually surprisingly accurate in most aspects.Lets take a look at the facts of this movie.It's about a girl who is extremely distressed about many of the normal teenage problems such as a bad relationship with her parents,a less than understanding sibling,a boyfriend who doesn't care about her at all,a constant feeling that she doesn't fit in and that nobody likes her.(I think that anyone and everyone has also had to deal with at least one of these issues at one point or another in there lives.)The point is that in order to deal with these problems she cuts herself.Which happens to people who are in extreme distress and are generally quiet,keep to themselves,and just have trouble communicating there feelings.I'm very passionate about the issue of Self Injury and i love when movies,TV shows and whatnot actually represent the issue in an accurate form.From beginning to end i really think that you can connect with the character of Dawn and feel her pain.She seems to be painfully shy and all she wants is to fit in and make friends.The mother in this movie is just terrible but in reality i think this may actually be the way that a lot of mothers may act in reaction to finding out that there child is a self injurer.At first when i was watching this movie and i saw the mom's character play out and i thought maybe she was just scared of losing her daughter to cutting, but then i realized she was just plain selfish and that all she cared about was people knowing that she raised a daughter that was a cutter, and it wasn't even that she was worried about the embarrassment that Dawn would face because of her cutting but the embarrassment that she,the mom, would face because of Dawn's cutting.That is why i believe the mom told everyone that Dawn was cutting,to force Dawn to stop cutting so that she wouldn't have to deal with the fact that her daughter was a cutter and her embarrassment.The Dad on the other hand seemed like he genuinely cared but no longer had a good relationship with his daughter so he wasn't quite sure how to communicate with her.He wanted to help her but had no idea how to go about it.There were a couple scenes in this movie that demonstrated that wonderfully.The so called popular girls in this movie were completely ruthless and enjoyed every moment of Dawn's pain.I have never seen girls this terrible before.The only people in this movie that really seemed to care about Dawn's pain was her new friend Lorraine, and her father.Lorraine was definitely one of the best things that happened to Dawn.You could tell that Lorraine really cared about Dawn and just wanted to help her.The best acting in this movie was definitely provided by the teenagers.They were all really great and completely believable.One real issue that i had with this movie was in fact the ending.The ending was very unsettling and left a lot of unanswered questions.I really think that more should have been added to clear up a few things but overall this was a good movie and i give it a 9/10.Also,i suggest to anyone who is a Self Injurer or has been a Self Injurer, or knows someone who is a Self Injurer to give this movie a chance and watch it you might just learn something.

ctcer53 While I did not think this movie was terrible, I didn't think it was great either. But, it did have the creepy factor down. It put me in a numb, thoughtless mood for a few hours after I finished watching it. The scene that I really think got me was when she used the razor and cut her stomach, etc.I thought that this was a pretty decent film for someone who knew nothing about cutting. However, I am really sick of these "awareness" movies, about things like cutting, eating disorders, etc., who try to show a "typical" victim. Even when they try to make the victim come from a "typical" family, such as in "Secret Cutting," there are always obvious factors (usually external) that provoke the problem. Why can't they ever show a character who doesn't know or can't explain what makes her (or him) do whatever she is doing? It upsets me that these kind of movies always make everything so clear-cut and easy to understand.However, Dawn's situation in this movie did explain her cutting, and the movie was overall good. While some people commented that her expressions and the "orgasmic" cutting experience were unrealistic, I fully disagree. For some, at least, cutting is a way of releasing inner feelings - it calms you down. You can feel all the stress and pain from life fade away for a little while. I think that, if anything, Dawn's expressions while she is cutting makes it more realistic, and shows the depth of her cutting. Overall, it's not a great movie, but it's not terrible either.