MOVIE REVIEW
“WAVES”
Rated R. At AMC Loews Boston Common, Coolidge Corner Theatre and Kendall Square Cinema.
Grade: A-
“Waves,” Texas-born filmmaker Trey Edward Shults’ follow-up to his very impressive 2015 no-budget family drama “Krisha” and the somewhat less gripping 2017 genre-entry “It Comes at Night,” is a powerful piece of work. If there is an heir to Terrence Malick out there, Shults, who served as an intern on three Malick films and whose grasp of the techniques of visual storytelling, using the camera as a non-narrative, non-literary “pen,” is it.
In opening scenes, featuring a unique, whirling camera, Shults establishes the milieu. We meet Tyler Williams (Kevin Harrison Jr.), an upper-middle-class, aggressively athletic, senior wrestler for a high school team, competing, working out, romping on a beach with his girlfriend Alexis (Alexa Demie) and their friends and hanging out in his room. Tyler is the sole son of self-made contractor Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), who trains just as hard and is as hard-bodied as his son. Tyler also has a bond with his stepmother Catherine (Renee Elise Goldsberry), who raised him. But an injury Tyler hides from his parents and his coach, combined with news that Alexis is pregnant and wants to keep the child, send him into a life-altering tailspin, opioid painkillers and violence included. After the “miserabilist” first half, “Waves” turns into a story of love and redemption when we follow Tyler’s isolated younger sister Emily (Taylor Russell of TV’s “Lost in Space”) on a road trip with her new boyfriend Luke (Lucas Hedges). The two enamored young people are off together to visit Luke’s dying, estranged father.
Shults’ films have been strong family dramas written and directed by him, often featuring his family and often centering on father and son bonds. Like “Krisha,” whose star has a cameo in “Waves,” “Waves” is a remarkable, impressionistic, sensory experience. The film’s sights and sounds pour down upon us like the pounding waves of the title, burying us in tragedy and hardship, love and absolution. Shults is a natural born filmmaker. I can’t think of a more impressive or immersive visual stylist of his generation. The music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is an integral part of this film’s spell. Music, mood, atmosphere, performances, they’re all here. Say hello to a genuine wunderkind.
(“Waves” contains drug and alcohol use, extreme violence, sexually suggestive scenes and profanity.)
