Edge of Everything, 2024.
Written and Directed Pablo Feldman and Sophia Sabella.
Starring Sierra McCormick, Jason Butler Harner, Ryan Simpkins, Emily Robinson, Dominique Gayle, Sabina Friedman-Seitz, Drew Scheid, Ben Weinswig, Nadezhda Amé, Cat Yamashita, Hannah Aniela, Kyle Becker, Lucy Black, Ben Cleaveland, Elias Feldman, Karen Goldberg, Napoleon Highbrou, Sarah Kliban, Mike Manning, Eli Leonard, Natalie Rousseau, Scott Mun, and Gabe Seplow.
SYNOPSIS:
A teenager on the cusp of turning 15, Abby straddles the line between childhood and adulthood when she is forced to move in with her father and his younger girlfriend after her mother’s death.
Hitting all of its expected plot beats competently, Edge of Everything suffers from an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Everything filmmakers Pablo Feldman and Sophia Sabella (making their feature-length debut) are exploring here in this rebellious teenage angst character study has been done better in recent material. There is a bold turn from Sierra McCormick, which thrives on escalating reckless abandonment, but the situations the nearly 15-year-old Abby finds herself in here come across more as abridged, sparse versions of dynamics serving as the focal points for genuinely terrific movies such as Eighth Grade and Palm Trees and Power Lines, but without any fresh perspective, compelling hook, or astute angle.
Abby is not over the death of her mom, still starting every day listening to the final voicemail she made before her tragic death (which we can presume was the result of a fatal car accident, given what we hear.) Her father, David (Jason Butler Harner), has already moved on and found a new partner, Sabina Friedman-Seitz’s Leslie, to much disapproval from Abby, which is only amplified when she finds out they are planning on having a child. Naturally, this causes Abby to butt heads with this new parental figure, except that the screenplay starts the fighting from the get-go and doesn’t really take the time to flesh out Leslie beyond those arguments. Worse, some of the verbal sparring feels forced, making her out to be unsympathetic to the grieving. Or perhaps she was for a while and the movie picks up afterward.
Regardless, that’s nothing compared to Ryan Simpkins’ Caroline, a tornado of trouble that Abby befriends, looking to distance herself from the well-behaved reputation of her longtime friends. Again, everything you would expect to happen happens: Abby gets into drugs, starts staying out for long stretches of time without telling her father where she is, drinking, a sudden interest in sexual experimentation that starts with boys and grows into an inappropriate crush for an older man comfortable taking advantage of her directionless and inner pain. Instead, it’s all manic energy without much purpose or insight.
To reiterate, Sierra McCormick authentically charts this descent into horrible decision-making, but every other character feels like they exist to push Abby on that path. There is no window into why Caroline is a wrecking ball to society, obsessed with alcohol, drugs, and sex. One imagines there would be heart-to-hearts or personal conversations here meant to tie that together (from Abby’s perspective, bottling things up makes sense to a point, and there is at least one attempt to have her bring up having lost her mother to Caroline), but the film is committed to chronicling their bad behavior more than anything.
Even the relationship between Abby and an approximately 30-year-old Dylan (Anthony Del Negro) is rushed. She gets his number and is quickly invited to a party that she attends with Caroline and her other friends, most of whom have become increasingly worried about her destructive behavior and want to know this guy’s age. That is until some more forced drama also begins to set some of them down the same carefree path. Nevertheless, this subplot culminates at a large party Dylan is throwing, where none of the attendees (men and women) question what a group of teenagers are doing there. Yes, some of these people are complicit guys who don’t care, but it’s also a stretch that no one would express some concern.
What does feel sincere are the dialogues between daughter and father, with the latter rapidly approaching his breaking point trying to convince her that the narrative she has built up about him being a lousy father is wrong. Again, adding a new romantic partner doesn’t fit into the movie, which is something even the filmmakers might realize considering a creative choice they make that has no consequence or emotional payoff. The same could be said about all of Edge of Everything; it drifts through this familiar story, only eliciting indifference even with solid central work from Sierra McCormick.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
