*My review of Waves was originally published on Film Inquiry. Click here to read the original post and check out more great reviews from this awesome site!*
Waves, the latest film from Krisha and It Comes at Night director Trey Edward Shults, is the work of a young filmmaker who is completely and utterly high on his own supply. Everything in this grandiose, quasi-Greek tragedy of a third feature is dialed up to 11, so exaggerated in its intensity that it rapidly envelops you by sheer force of will. Shults is a filmmaker who likes to call attention to his own direction—and to the medium itself—by incorporating aspect ratio changes, restless camera work, and an accelerated pace, all in service of one Miami family’s emotional journey. But make no mistake: this is a long, grueling, and often abrasive journey, a film that prefers sensory overload over subtlety. Waves is so deeply anxiety-inducing that I’ll be shocked if even the supposed feature-length panic attack of Uncut Gems can top it; it’s so unpleasant that it makes Joker look like a Pixar film.
It is also a rewarding and harrowing experience that I haven’t been shake in the days since I first saw it.
Waves plays as a bifurcated narrative, split by an event of such sheer, unadulterated trauma that I’m not sure if it’s ingenious, cruel, or both. The first half of the film introduces viewers to the Williams family: controlling father Ron (Sterling K. Brown), kind-hearted mother Catharine (Renée Elise Goldsberry), reserved sister Emily (Taylor Russell), and most importantly, Tyler (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), the center of Shults‘ narrative orbit. Tyler is a top-notch high school wrestler, and at the start of the film, the world is his oyster. He’s enormously popular at school and currently dating the beautiful Alexis (Alexa Demie), who he loves with all his heart.
But the veneer of perfection masks some troubling events bubbling under the surface. His father is a maniac as a strength and conditioning coach, pushing Tyler beyond any reasonable expectations for a young man. In addition, Tyler’s shoulder is beginning to buckle under the weight of the pressure: doctors warn him that if he doesn’t stop wrestling to receive surgery, he may never be the same again. With crippling pain, Tyler’s story becomes a familiar one for the American athlete: popping pills left and right, washing it down with alcohol and other drugs. It all gets worse when Alexis reveals to him a terrifying truth—she’s pregnant, and she wants to keep the baby.
To say what happens next would constitute something of a spoiler, so for those who fear such reveals, I’ll keep it vague. But it goes without saying that Shults reaches something of a dramatic apex at the film’s mid-point, bringing the tragic strands of Tyler’s life crashing together in a nervous breakdown of a setpiece that is as nauseating as it is impeccably composed. From this crescendo, which provoked an audible and virtually involuntary response from my festival audience, Waves shifts into a more reflective, poignant emotional register.
Here, the film goes from being an impressive technical exercise to functioning as something more profound. Not to diminish the sheer filmmaking skill displayed by Shults in the first half, but it’s one thing to shock and beat an audience into submission—it’s another thing altogether to find something profound to say about this nightmare. Primarily through the depiction of Emily’s moving, nurturing relationship with new boyfriend Luke (Lucas Hedges), Waves becomes a film about moving on from tragedy and reclaiming life’s beauty in the face of loss and heartbreak. Shults still piles on the trauma a bit thick, and I’m not sure Harrison‘s Tyler has enough dimensions to deserve his ultimate, almost pre-ordained fate. But by the film’s conclusion, there’s no denying that Shults, at long last, reaches a moving and authentic catharsis.
THE FINAL GRADE: A- (8.2/10)
Waves, the latest film from Krisha and It Comes at Night director Trey Edward Shults, is the work of a young filmmaker who is completely and utterly high on his own supply. Everything in this grandiose, quasi-Greek tragedy of a third feature is dialed up to 11, so exaggerated in its intensity that it rapidly envelops you by sheer force of will. Shults is a filmmaker who likes to call attention to his own direction—and to the medium itself—by incorporating aspect ratio changes, restless camera work, and an accelerated pace, all in service of one Miami family’s emotional journey. But make no mistake: this is a long, grueling, and often abrasive journey, a film that prefers sensory overload over subtlety. Waves is so deeply anxiety-inducing that I’ll be shocked if even the supposed feature-length panic attack of Uncut Gems can top it; it’s so unpleasant that it makes Joker look like a Pixar film.
It is also a rewarding and harrowing experience that I haven’t been shake in the days since I first saw it.
Waves plays as a bifurcated narrative, split by an event of such sheer, unadulterated trauma that I’m not sure if it’s ingenious, cruel, or both. The first half of the film introduces viewers to the Williams family: controlling father Ron (Sterling K. Brown), kind-hearted mother Catharine (Renée Elise Goldsberry), reserved sister Emily (Taylor Russell), and most importantly, Tyler (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), the center of Shults‘ narrative orbit. Tyler is a top-notch high school wrestler, and at the start of the film, the world is his oyster. He’s enormously popular at school and currently dating the beautiful Alexis (Alexa Demie), who he loves with all his heart.
But the veneer of perfection masks some troubling events bubbling under the surface. His father is a maniac as a strength and conditioning coach, pushing Tyler beyond any reasonable expectations for a young man. In addition, Tyler’s shoulder is beginning to buckle under the weight of the pressure: doctors warn him that if he doesn’t stop wrestling to receive surgery, he may never be the same again. With crippling pain, Tyler’s story becomes a familiar one for the American athlete: popping pills left and right, washing it down with alcohol and other drugs. It all gets worse when Alexis reveals to him a terrifying truth—she’s pregnant, and she wants to keep the baby.
To say what happens next would constitute something of a spoiler, so for those who fear such reveals, I’ll keep it vague. But it goes without saying that Shults reaches something of a dramatic apex at the film’s mid-point, bringing the tragic strands of Tyler’s life crashing together in a nervous breakdown of a setpiece that is as nauseating as it is impeccably composed. From this crescendo, which provoked an audible and virtually involuntary response from my festival audience, Waves shifts into a more reflective, poignant emotional register.
Here, the film goes from being an impressive technical exercise to functioning as something more profound. Not to diminish the sheer filmmaking skill displayed by Shults in the first half, but it’s one thing to shock and beat an audience into submission—it’s another thing altogether to find something profound to say about this nightmare. Primarily through the depiction of Emily’s moving, nurturing relationship with new boyfriend Luke (Lucas Hedges), Waves becomes a film about moving on from tragedy and reclaiming life’s beauty in the face of loss and heartbreak. Shults still piles on the trauma a bit thick, and I’m not sure Harrison‘s Tyler has enough dimensions to deserve his ultimate, almost pre-ordained fate. But by the film’s conclusion, there’s no denying that Shults, at long last, reaches a moving and authentic catharsis.
THE FINAL GRADE: A- (8.2/10)
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