Stuff
Waves is an ambitious, startling, spectacular over-stuffed and occasionally quite punishing ride. Shults obviously has a lot to say, and insists on saying pretty much all of it, within that just-forgivable 135-minute running time.
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Waves
Two young couples grapple with love, family and growing up in this Florida-set romance drama from the writer-director of Krisha and It Comes at Night. Stars Golden Globe winner Sterling K Brown (This is Us) and Alexa Demie (HBO's Euphoria).
2019Rating: MA15+, Strong coarse language135 minsUSA
DramaRomanceFestival & Independent
- Director:
- Trey Edward Shults ('It Comes at Night', 'Krisha')
- Writer:
- Trey Edward Shults
- Cast:
- Sterling K. BrownRenée Elise GoldsberryLucas HedgesKelvin Harrison Jr.Alexa DemieTaylor Russell
Waves / Reviews
The Times
The film oozes cinematic style (every shot has a point, every camera movement an intention), while Shults's screenplay dives deep and tackles essential themes - parenting, forgiveness and the release of death. It's beautiful work.
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The New York Times
All of Shults's stylistic brio and formal inventiveness is finally in the service of a story about love, its mutability and fragility.
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Time Out
The artistic evolution Shults is undergoing makes him as exciting as anyone at work -- he's as sharp as the young Darren Aronofsky, and his heart is only growing larger.
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Los Angeles Times
"Waves" is an even deeper plunge into the same pool, but for all its darkness, it's also a work of great tenderness, with a bracing openness to complex new frontiers of human experience.
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The Guardian
There are two films here: one is frightening and poignant and the other tender but slight. The first one will haunt me even if the second will fade.
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IndieWire
While the movie risks smothering the heart of its drama in all the movement and noise, the sheer sensory overload often leads to astonishing bursts of emotional sophistication.
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Variety
Propelled by color, energy, electronic music and a quartet of career-making performances, here is that rare sort of cinematic achievement that innovates at every turn, while teaching audiences how to make intuitive sense of the way it pushes the medium.
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Hollywood Reporter
Technically, it wouldn't be wrong to call Waves a "teen drama," but that generic label doesn't begin to convey the emotional scope of this tender, bruising, exuberant film.
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