Picture this: me, excited about my first film festival but sitting in the theater as the credits rolled and letting out a huge sigh of relief after realizing that this gruelingly emotional film was finally over. Waves is one of the most impactful and purely emotional films that I have seen this year, but not necessarily in a good way. Trey Edward Shults' modern drama about a suburban family and their spiral after a personal tragedy is a story that I desperately wanted to be able to cling onto, but the seemingly random inclusions of many plot points threw me for the worst possible loop. While this film definitely has its effective moments and I enjoyed some parts more than others, the story as a whole is never able to come together to tell its audience anything interesting. The performances were fantastic and the film itself looked gorgeous but narrative coherency makes or breaks a story for me and Waves was unfortunately beyond repair.
This film follows the suburban lives of a family made up of Catharine (Renée Elise Goldsberry), Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), and their children Emily (Taylor Russell) and Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). Struggling with the already challenging task of having two teenagers in the house and balancing all of their changing lives, the family is shattered forever after they must learn how to navigate love and loss after a personal tragedy. This exhausting movie had the potential to be a much more well-developed exploration into a typical, suburban family and how their world is turned upside-down, but the execution of this story is what holds it back from that. Waves not only vastly overstayed its welcome but it felt like it was never going to end. The biggest issue with this film is that Shults' direction makes it feel like two entirely different films. I really enjoyed the first half for what it was and I really enjoyed the second half for what it was, but the combination of the two and transition between them was far too jarring. The shift in perspective from Tyler to Emily is a narrative choice that I can understand but because of the lack of focus on anybody except Tyler in the first half, I could not muster up enough energy to care about the characters after that. Because of this, the whole film was paced extremely awkwardly and it would have been much more cohesive is it had focused on the entire family dealing with the tragedy rather than one character at a time. I very much enjoyed Emily's perspective and how it was more of a coming-of-age film (underwater scene and all), but her story felt more like a second episode of a series rather than a subplot for the overall movie.
Due to both the dialogue and clichéd personalities of these characters, I could not see past this film's mediocrity in its script either. I can understand why other people might be affected by this much more than I was, but I was just not that moved by Schults' storytelling abilities at all. There was a single storyline throughout this film that these characters should have revolved around but Schults kept pulling out emotional stops in the script and with unnecessary subplots that I could not see why anyone would care for. It almost seems as if he was trying to put too many tragic and emotional elements in one film just for the sake of making the audience sad, but they were not introduced early enough for me to even care for; hence the inclusion of Lucas Hedges' aptly-named character Luke. The awkward, sloppy direction made this film very hard to watch and I honestly kept wondering when it would finally be over. Don't get me wrong, this film had its excellent moments of solid drama and genuinely shocking content but the execution and dullness of it all are what kept it from becoming something more. Waves also changes its aspect ratio four times and while it kept me intrigued, I still don't entirely understand the point of that creative choice.
Luckily, while this movie was a huge miss for me emotionally, there is no denying that the story itself is set in a beautifully-colorful world partnered with some incredible performances. Harrison Jr. and Russell are especially fantastic, as they portray these siblings so well through their tender chemistry. Both of them were able to show off their acting talents best, however, when they were in their separate stories. I would have liked to seen Harrison Jr. lead this entire film or Russell lead this entire film because their individual stories almost felt like they were competing. They were undoubtedly fantastic, though, and the addition of Sterling K. Brown's fatherly, soothing voice was just the cherry on top of this perfect cast. Even though I did not feel much out of this experience, all of the artists involved really helped to at least try and get some relatability out of me. I can plainly see what these filmmakers were going for, but I do still think that Schults relied way too much on his indie direction and the hip soundtrack rather than his characters.
I'm very disappointed that I did not end up enjoying Waves as much as I had anticipated but at least I got some solid performances from the whole cast. It's never good when I'm watching a movie and simply waiting for it to be over, but this film just really did not work for me. Despite my gripes with its direction and careless storytelling, Waves has every perfect mark of an A24 film and I will not be surprised if this is able to resonate with many more people.
My Rating: ★★½
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