REVIEW: Suncoast [2024]

Rating: R | Runtime: 109 minutes
Release Date: February 2nd, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Searchlight Pictures / Hulu
Director(s): Laura Chinn
Writer(s): Laura Chinn

We’re going to have fun again.

Films like Laura Chinn’s Suncaost too often try to approximate the feelings of grief with a sense of certainty that simply does not exist in the moment. Yes, in hindsight, we understand the situation and learn to accept it, but the effects of tragedy aren’t experienced the same by everyone. Heck, you might not experience them the same once tragedy strikes again regardless of any desire to go in with open eyes. Because, as Doris (Nico Parker) tells her teacher, you simply cannot know anything until you know it. The rest is speculation. Noise. Deflection.

And that’s why this story, as presented on-screen, resonates so well. Chinn has put her own experience into this film in a way that allows it to unfold with all the pain and uncertainty that goes into losing someone you love—someone you’ve sacrificed a lot of yourself to try and make their life better. Most of that hurt comes from denial and much of that denial comes from the constant desire on the behalf of others to tell you not to deny it. But what good are Doris’s mom’s (Laura Linney’s Kristine) demands when she herself is caught within the same trap?

It’s why we need a third character. An objective party to tell truths without being so emotionally invested that they negatively impact the chance those truths are heard. Enter Woody Harrelson’s Paul in a role that is much smaller than you might anticipate considering his billing and face on the poster. Just because his screen-time is minimal, however, doesn’t mean his impact is. He’s a sort of mirror for both Doris and Kristine even if he serves that role for us as viewers more so than them. He’s gone through what they are going through. He has hindsight and experience, but he also knows it’s not up to him whether they listen.

Nor should they be forced to do so. Doris is a teenager dealing with life in ways that no one her age should. Grandmother dead the day she’s born. Father dead by age five. Brother catatonic and about to pass himself after six years of being under her care. You cannot begrudge her for seeing hospice as a chance to be free. To live for herself again and make new friends. To be a kid. Maybe it’s not the greatest look considering the circumstances, but that’s not on Kristine to shame her about. This is about Doris reconciling the need to laugh with the heavy burden of watching someone she loves die. There’s no “right” way to do it.

Kudos to Chinn for embracing the mess. Yes, there are some convenient moments like that classroom conversation with Doris laying out the film’s themes, but the overall vibe remains one built on confusion and mistakes. It takes guts to write what Kristine does to Doris and knowledge of these characters/ complexity to do so in a way that lets the rage hit without erasing the sorrow. These are people trying their best to navigate an impossible ordeal while sometimes falling prey to the momentary satisfaction of transferring their pain onto each other. And it unfolds beautifully thanks to Chinn’s words and Linney and Parker’s great performances.