Genre:
While Seasmonsters attempts to analyse the transition between adolescence and adulthood, it only exceeds in finding the complexity of it's central relationships
Seamonsters, the impressive debut feature film from director Julian Kerridge, is a story about love. It’s about the love between life-long friends, those that meet by chance, and those that are totally wrong for each other. The film explores them all, wavering slightly when deciding where to focus the lens, but offering insight into each and every joy and complication those relationships can have.
We meet Sam and Kieran, two familiarly bored mates on the precipice of adulthood. Living in a small seaside town, the mundanity and boredom of everyday life permeates every frame. It’s a familiar set-up, for both UK and US teen-friendly output, but never has the audience been so aware of the depressingly static nature of existence caught between two phases of life. The film’s title refers to the monsters that live just over the horizon when looking out to sea, and those monsters of adulthood and change threaten to destroy the characters’ lives throughout.
Though we never see the lives Kieran and Sam lived before this point, we instantly understand their bond and the problems that changing personalities and varying ambition has brought to the relationship. Sam is the sensible one who wants a normal life more than anything, while Kieran is volatile and immature, ignoring his devoted girlfriend, Moony, and changing their lives forever when getting involved with Sam’s potential love interest, the enigmatic and mysterious Lori.
And it is the girls who truly drive the story along, each occupying half of the film. Lori goes first, playing the Manic Pixie Dream Girl so familiar to this type of film. She introduces Sam to a world he hasn’t thought to reach out to before, but the boys soon become too entrapped by her self-destructive path for their friendship to survive. Once they go their separate ways, the mature and ambitious Moony takes the lead in their lives, and her involvement makes for a muddled last act that doesn’t quite take stock of what’s gone before.
But the strength of the film is the intense power struggle between childhood friends, and the two young actors play to it to perfection throughout. The four vastly different characters are allowed to act and talk like real teenagers, offering insights like “there’s no magic to the world being round” and making mistakes familiar to anyone who can remember that period of their lives. Although the film takes its time to contemplate very little action, there’s a slow building tension that is paid off well in the final section of the film.
As a film about the teenage condition and transition into adulthood, Seamonsters offers little that is new or challenging. It does, however, manage to be a fascinating illustration of male friendship and how the passing of time alone can change circumstances, as well as the mundanity of a life brought about my limited expectations.
We meet Sam and Kieran, two familiarly bored mates on the precipice of adulthood. Living in a small seaside town, the mundanity and boredom of everyday life permeates every frame. It’s a familiar set-up, for both UK and US teen-friendly output, but never has the audience been so aware of the depressingly static nature of existence caught between two phases of life. The film’s title refers to the monsters that live just over the horizon when looking out to sea, and those monsters of adulthood and change threaten to destroy the characters’ lives throughout.
Though we never see the lives Kieran and Sam lived before this point, we instantly understand their bond and the problems that changing personalities and varying ambition has brought to the relationship. Sam is the sensible one who wants a normal life more than anything, while Kieran is volatile and immature, ignoring his devoted girlfriend, Moony, and changing their lives forever when getting involved with Sam’s potential love interest, the enigmatic and mysterious Lori.
And it is the girls who truly drive the story along, each occupying half of the film. Lori goes first, playing the Manic Pixie Dream Girl so familiar to this type of film. She introduces Sam to a world he hasn’t thought to reach out to before, but the boys soon become too entrapped by her self-destructive path for their friendship to survive. Once they go their separate ways, the mature and ambitious Moony takes the lead in their lives, and her involvement makes for a muddled last act that doesn’t quite take stock of what’s gone before.
But the strength of the film is the intense power struggle between childhood friends, and the two young actors play to it to perfection throughout. The four vastly different characters are allowed to act and talk like real teenagers, offering insights like “there’s no magic to the world being round” and making mistakes familiar to anyone who can remember that period of their lives. Although the film takes its time to contemplate very little action, there’s a slow building tension that is paid off well in the final section of the film.
As a film about the teenage condition and transition into adulthood, Seamonsters offers little that is new or challenging. It does, however, manage to be a fascinating illustration of male friendship and how the passing of time alone can change circumstances, as well as the mundanity of a life brought about my limited expectations.
