Film

Beach Rats

Name: Beach Rats
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 2017
Cast: Harris Dickinson, Madeline Weinstein, Kate Hodge, Neal Huff, Nicole Flyus

Coming-of-age

A portrait of a trapped Brooklyn teenager caught between the world his family and friends expect him to inhabit and an online life he can't reconcile with it. Quietly devastating, formally precise, with Harris Dickinson delivering a performance of fractured grace. For anyone who remembers the suffocation of being young and unable to name what's wrong.

TMDb rating

3.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you respond to quiet, observational character studies where a young man's inner unrest lives in long silences, sun-bleached streets and glances rather than in plot turns.

Skip it if you want a story that moves briskly or resolves its tensions cleanly, since this one lingers on mood and restlessness and often lets scenes hang without explanation.

What it asks of you: It runs about ninety-nine minutes at a deliberate, hushed pace, and it asks you to sit with discomfort and watch closely, reading faces and pauses instead of being told what to feel.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Moonlight2016

Three luminous sections tracing a Black queer man from childhood through adulthood. Like Beach Rats, it finds poetic depth in silence and the spaces between words, never explaining or pitying its protagonist.

But Moves at a deliberate pace that asks patience; some find its reticence frustrating rather than moving.

The Fits2016

A girl navigates belonging and desire within a Cincinnati dance team. Gorgeously shot, mysterious about what's actually happening, concerned with identity and bodies and the magnetism of belonging.

But Deliberately cryptic; it doesn't explain itself and some viewers find that maddening rather than intriguing.

C.R.A.Z.Y.2005

A Quebec teenager navigates his father's aggression and his own unfolding sexuality across decades. Tender and funny and devastated all at once, with similar stakes about being trapped inside a life you can't yet name.

But Shifts tone abruptly and some viewers find the tonal whiplash distracting; also slightly dated in look.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Beach Rats

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

My Own Private Idaho1991

Both refuse to redeem or explain their protagonist's sexuality; both find tragic grace in what remains unsayable between young men and the world.

Gus Van Sant's sleeping-god odyssey about two rent boys on the Portland streets. Dreamy, sexually explicit, formally wild. Like Beach Rats it's about desire and desperation and the self you can't control—but it swings for devastated poetry instead of naturalism.

But Uncompromising queer cinema that doesn't soften itself; shot on Super 8, structurally chaotic, and sexually graphic. Thirty years old and still alienates people.

Boyhood2014

Twelve years of a boy's life in fragments, watched grow and change. Captures the strange time-passing quality of adolescence and the way small moments metastasize into who you become.

But Formless for many viewers; without clear stakes or an obvious dramatic shape, some find it passionless.

Lean on Pete2018

A lonely teenager and a horse. Minimal plot, maximal emotional intelligence. Contains one of the finest performances by a young male actor in recent cinema; deeply kind without being mawkish.

But Advances at a wandering pace and some sequences feel slack; the economy of the storytelling isn't for everyone.

Chloe2010

Both understand desire as a form of self-destruction; both use sparse, painterly visual style to suggest what characters cannot articulate. Same year Egoyan made a film about secrets as Beach Rats did.

Atom Egoyan's ice-cold investigation of a woman spying on her husband's infidelity through a call girl. Formally controlled, sexually ambiguous, ultimately about the violence of wanting to know. Stunning cinematography of Toronto winter.

But Glacial pacing; Egoyan trusts his viewer's patience to the breaking point. Also: the sexual content is frank and not presented as titillation.