The opening of the film depicts teenager Ken Park (nicknamed "Krap Nek" which is his first and last name spelled and pronounced backward), skateboarding across Visalia, California. He arrives at a skate park, where he casually sits in the middle of it, sets up a camcorder, smiles, and shoots himself in the temple with a handgun. His death is used to bookend the film, which follows the lives of four teens who knew him in the weeks running up to his suicide.