Beach Rats (2017)
Storyline
An aimless teenager on the outer edges of Brooklyn struggles to escape his bleak home life and navigate questions of self-identity, as he balances his time between his delinquent friends, a potential new girlfriend, and older men he meets online.
Directors
Cast
Trailer
Reviews
100
If the film is tender, it’s merciless at the same time.
90
Eliza Hittman's second feature is very much the work of a filmmaker with her own distinctive voice, combining moody poetry with textural sensuality to evoke the dangerous recklessness that often accompanies sexual discovery.
90
Writer-director Eliza Hittman has a sensitive ear for the way adolescents reveal themselves through evasion: It’s a tension crucial to this anxious, tactile, profoundly sad study of a young man’s journey of sexual self-discovery and self-betrayal.
83
With an energetic set of young actors liberated by Hittman’s jittery naturalism, the movie remains a gripping drama throughout — a combination that speaks to the director’s emerging aesthetic.
83
As a hyper-focused, dream-like portrait of a teenager grappling with both the conditions of his upbringing and a newfound identity, Beach Rats feels invigorating at very turn.
