Waves (2019) SPOILER Review

Waves is a 2019 film directed by Trey Edward Shults, the man behind "It Comes at Night" and "Krisha" Staring Kelvin Harrison Jr, Alexa Demie, Taylor Russell and A24's favorite man... Lucas Hedges. As what would an A24 film be without him. It tells the story of the life of an African American family trying to cope through many harsh and heartbreaking events.

To start this review, I am going to say how I would like to structure it. Since the one word constantly associated with this film is “messy” and has attached many comparisons to seeming like a student film, I am going to break down the film into the sections a film student first learns when it comes to filmmaking:

Cinematography

Editing

Score

Lighting

Cinematography

Set against the backdrop of Florida its always going to be hard to make a film look bad when you have that as a location. Trey Edward Shults thrives off the beautiful scenery around him as this film looks so gorgeous and elegant, it is at times hypnotizing. Rich in vibrant colours thanks to cinematographer Drew Daniels who also worked with Shults on his polarizing 2017 film “It Comes at Night” It uses many strong and bright colours when lighting the scenes such as yellows and reds which brings me to my first potential issue. It is obviously meant to make the audience go “oh wow that looks brilliant” or looks exactly what you would expect from an A24 film. But it makes me wonder building on this film's comparisons to it being a film made for film students was there a point to these excessive colours? Do they actually convey mood? Or are they just there to make it look pretty and appeal to its younger target audience? Honestly, I'm not sure. By all means at times they are necessary such as the strong bright reds used to reflect Tyler intense panic and his, well, rather inconvenient situation. However, I recall a shot when Tyler is looking into a mirror which has a yellow light rim which lights up his face and this shot with a golden glow. Was this completely needed? No. Does it make it look good? I guess. Does it appear to just be there to make its general aesthetic get more twitter posts from film twitter? Kind of. Nevertheless, I'll just be honest I liked the general look of the film. Maybe I've fallen under the spell of the colours and I am just another teenage film fan who will automatically like a film based on the vibrant colours, and if that’s true so be it.

Editing

It is now time to talk about the key talking point, the messy editing. The main reason I believe this film is being called a “mess” Not quite sure on how to start I think I'll just say this film could have ended at maybe 5 different points. The first and most blatant one after Tyler kills his girlfriend Alexis. If the film ended then I would have left the cinema happy with what I just saw a well-executed short anxiety ridden coming of age drama. Then the second half rolled around and if I’m being truthful it felt like I was watching a different film. Or even the next episode of a TV show. I would be interested to know what the time stamp was after the Tyler story was finished. The first half was better. Many people would probably disagree, but the second half just didn’t do anything for me or hit me emotionally like it should have. Lucas Hedges was great as always and Taylor Russell was also excellent in the first role, I've seen of hers. But I just struggled to find myself invested. I get it was trying to explore themes of forgiveness and moving on through tough times, but it just felt at time slightly dull and maybe 15/20 minutes could have been cut off. I just didn’t care about Hedges character no matter how good his performance was.

The editing also led to a lot of pacing issues and severe underdevelopment. I feel it could have done with more explorations between the brother sister dynamic in the first half to add more emotional punch in the second. There was the scene in the bathroom where Tyler is crying but that’s about all I can think of.

I have also seen people defend the structure of this film by saying it reflects how messy family problems can be. Do I buy that completely or does it just seem like an excuse? In some senses, yes, I do but is that really a let off for sloppy editing, I don’t think so. The story just felt completely disjointed and a bit more development could have done it wonders.

Score

The soundtrack in this film is probably the most prominent device used. It consists of many massive artists such as Kanye West, Frank Ocean and Animal Collective. To me there's more to these types of songs being used then just to appeal to a larger audience. Let's not forget it’s a coming of age film, these songs are influential in Tyler's childhood. Shults said in an interview “If you separated all the tracks into a playlist, there’s a narrative, and an arc is being told from track to track that mimics the movie,” One of Shults favorite artists is Frank Ocean – fun fact for you. The music used gives a youthful and raw mood to the film, which would not have existed if they failed to secure these artists permission.

Lighting

Now I am about to start writing about the lighting I've figured I have spoken about a massive lighting point In the Cinematography section...oops. However, I am yet to talking about the lighting as a whole. It has a strong use of lens flares which I know many people either love or hate. In this case I noticed a lot, but I was behind them. It suits the tone of this film perfectly and makes the film as a whole look vigorous and coming back to this word again, youthful. I have minimal complaints when it comes to the lighting so I think I will just leave it at that.

Overall

As a whole, I liked this film, less than I anticipated which was slightly disappointing but still got a good amount of enjoyment from it. I have seen 2 out of the 3 films from Shults (The one I haven't seen being “Krisha”) and I have nothing but support for this filmmaker. I loved “It Comes at Night” even though many didn’t which could have been due to the misleading advertising campaign, but this review isn't about that so let's move on. What it appears to be is that he is a polarizing film maker you can love his work, or you can hate it. But one thing you can't deny is the man's love for this art form making films he wants to make free from constraints, something I can only admire in this generation of filmmaking. I'm sure A24 need a thanks for that too. All though not all of Waves worked for me I would definitely recommend it and I think I'll give it a 3.5/5

3.5/5