Suncoast, 2024.
Written and Directed by Laura Chinn.
Starring Nico Parker, Laura Linney, Woody Harrelson, Daniella Taylor, Ella Anderson, Amarr, Ariel Martin, Keyla Monterroso Mejia, Pam Dougherty, Jason Burkey, Andrea Powell, Parker Sack, Andrew Dicostanzo, Elliott Sancrant, Matt Walsh, Karen Ceesay, Cree Kawa, Orelon Sidney, Brandon Arroyo, Darnell “Starnell” Snyder, Scott MacArthur, Carly Grissom, Oakley Maloney, and Finn Maloney.
SYNOPSIS:
While caring for her brother along with her audacious mother , a teenager strikes up a friendship with an eccentric activist who is protesting one of the most landmark medical cases of all time.
Drawing upon something as depressing and defeating as losing a brother to brain cancer for a directorial debut certainly gives Laura Chinn’s Suncoast (she also writes the film) authentic emotions, especially among the conflicted scenarios she is translating to the screen that she found herself in, but something is also strikingly off about the endeavor. I’m sure some liberties have been taken (and I would bet anything, at least one character has been completely fabricated for various reasons), but the film still seems to be trying to do too much.
For starters, the backdrop of the story also involves Terri Schiavo, where a complicated legal battle was being fought between her husband and parents on whether or not to remove the feeding tube from her vegetative state. Is this important to include, to be honest and accurate depicting the 2005 era of this more personal true story at the center of the narrative? Perhaps, but here it is entirely wasted as the script doesn’t do much with the tough questions at the center of moral ethics surrounding human beings and vegetative states beyond some shockingly tame classroom arguments that come down to the simple, safe, and respectable observation that the opinions on such matters will always carry more weight from the people that are actually affected by the ongoing tragedy.
What this means is that the Terri Schiavo drama becomes one of many separate elements that intervenes and drags down what could have been an emotionally absorbing, powerful (and it is at times, thanks to a revelatory central performance from young Nico Parker) of a teenage girl named Doris conflicted about what to feel when her dying brother Max (Cree Kawa) is taken into the titular hospice facility, meaning that she is relieved of the caregiving duties she has been saddled with for years on end while her widowed mother Kristina (Laura Linney) played the role of breadwinner. There is obviously an inherent sadness regarding the whole situation, but for the first time, she is free to be a regular teenager.
Even Doris doesn’t quite realize that her social growth has been stunted until she meets Paul (Woody Harrelson), one of the many average citizens heavily invested in the Terri Schiavo case, all of whom protest their opinions outside the facility daily. In that amusingly sardonic Woody Harrelson way, Paul points out bluntly that Doris sucks at talking to people but also encourages her to make friends and also becomes an unexpected source of wisdom. He is invested in the case due to some baggage that saw his wife die, but he also has wise words on grieving and saying goodbye that, naturally, take a while to get through to Doris.
The issue is that, once again, all of this feels superfluous to what is actually compelling about Suncoast as a film, which is Doris and her newfound sense of freedom and friends (she quickly befriends a group and becomes interested in a boy, lending her home as a place for parties while mom is out sleeping in the hospice center with Max.) A disservice is also done by spending roughly five minutes showing Doris as Max’s caregiver, and even then, the film doesn’t go into specific details beyond feeding and watching over him at home, or care about demonstrating the all-consuming nature of caregiving. There is simply a missed opportunity for a hard-hitting juxtaposition when she does start living life as a regular teenager.
Still, there is also the fact that everyone in Suncoast feels like they are a different movie. Nico Parker is talented and handles her big emotional moments well with shades of honesty amongst how conflicted Doris is about this point in her life. Meanwhile, Laura Linney is cranked up a bit too high as the obnoxious mom who is rude to the hospice staff about anything and everything simply because it’s easier than accepting that Max is dying. As for Woody Harrelson, it’s almost as if he stepped off the set of The Edge of Seventeen into this film. Then there are the seams with Doris and her friend group, which are somewhat generic looks at teen partying and relationship drama that’s difficult to care about.
No one wants to tell the filmmaker how they should have made or what should have been changed about a deeply personal story close to their heart, but Laura Chinn misses the mark on Suncoast as a narrative, even if it does have the occasional moving moment. There is a fatal misunderstanding of what to strip from the story, how to streamline it, and where the most compelling dramatic beats lie.
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
