Sometimes a movie treats its real-life inspiration with such shallowness that it should’ve just stayed as a not-so-fun fact icebreaker. “My brother died down the hall from Terri Schiavo in mid-2000s Florida” is a hell of an answer to “let’s go around and say something interesting about ourselves.” It might even be an engrossing chapter in a memoir. Translated to film, its tropey teen story overwhelms its tearjerker logline. Neither high schooler Doris (Nico Parker, Thandiwe Newton’s daughter who better proved her talents in her brief few minutes in The Last of Us), nor her foul-mouthed mom Kristine (Laura Linney), nor the dying process of Max (Cree Kawa, a prop) adds anything but an uncomfortably fluctuating tone to the familiar dramedy. While there is a literal amount of truth running through the semi-autobiographical Suncoast, its glossy, uncertain cutesiness is as fake as Ron DeSantis’ height.
Throughout Suncoast’s barbed-but-loving quips and prom night disasters, the vegetative patient at its core stays symbolic—a connection point to a national media storm more about granting this anonymous teen narrative a hook than giving it something to say. Though the family weathers actual storms and the hectic hospice flurry of protestors, counter-protestors, lookie-loos and overzealous security guards, this unique perspective is sparingly employed by first-time writer/director Laura Chinn. The brunt of the film involves Doris’ bland social life, its arc confined to her juggling popularity and personal tragedy.
Since Doris is but a doormat to her domineering mother, perpetually overshadowed by her brother’s brain cancer, her push for self-actualization has deeply emotional roots. Yet, since neither Doris nor Kristine ever develop into more than coming-of-age cut-outs, we’re left to make these connections while the characters go through the motions.
Kristine’s sleeping at the hospice, sharing a room with her comatose son—a desperately sad detail barely remarked upon by the movie. Her absence gives Doris a powerful social weapon: An empty house, free from adults, for the cool kids to party at. Though Doris is deeply dweeby, her broadly played classmates take a liking to her, bringing her into the world of mansions, clubs and fake IDs. Parker is amiable enough through this, and lets it all out when it’s time for her big climactic cry, but she’s got a role as thin as Suncoast’s social commentary.
Doris goes to a private Christian school, surrounded by money and conservative politics. Abortion and Schiavo are the topics of discussion in every class (for some reason), like a Bible-based quarter-turn on high school movies whose English classes always happen to be discussing the relevant star-crossed passages of Shakespeare during their romances. Reflective of Suncoast’s high school perspective, its premise’s hot-button issue is handled with as little insight as possible. Taking no stand, it treats the non-answer Doris delivers to her class about someone’s right to die (“We don’t know how anyone feels unless we’re them,” she shrugs) like a monk’s mic drop.
This is half-heartedly countered by the pseudo-hippy Paul (Woody Harrelson) who, despite being there to support Schiavo (“Every life is precious,” he intones), inserts himself into Doris’s day from time to time. Though Paul’s got some one-line wounds of his own, he’s here to parent Doris with his sunny wisdom. He dispenses advice and driving lessons and is never once questioned as to why he keeps randomly imposing himself upon this unsupervised minor. He’s a magical little screenplay sage who shows up when needed and disappears from the movie’s logic the moment he leaves the screen. A decade ago, the character would be Black and Doris would be white. It’d be terrible and racist. Thankfully, filmmaking has come a long way; now, it’s just terrible.
The kind of movies like Suncoast, little Sundance dramedies with name casts, love to sell you a charming misanthrope, especially one that comes in a package you might not expect—like a grief-stricken mother. Kristine isn’t a juicy role of a Difficult Woman, but rather an exhausting presence, partially because her profanity and obsessive care for her son are relentlessly played for grating laughs. Doris apologizes for her mother’s rudeness, while shots of Kristine turning a hospice room over in search of an electrical whine have the energy of a children’s movie. In the movie’s first moments, bright indie-pop guitar jangles while a busload of kids stare at Kristine and Doris struggling to move an unresponsive Max into their truck. If that image isn’t funny enough, the moment is capped by their truck’s tailgate falling open, over and over, to remind us that they aren’t just caring for a dying child, they’re also flat broke. Hilarious!
It’s not that the film handles its dying child tastelessly. One of the only insightful details of the script involves the scab formed around Doris’s heart now that memories of her brother like this are starting to eclipse fonder, healthier times. A bit of disaffected distance actually reinforces that point. But Chinn has no idea how to balance detached humor, wannabe-weepy emotions and a full rise-of-the-popular-girl high school plot.
Instead, she haphazardly shoves Suncoast’s sometimes-traumatic recollection into an annoyingly twee template, barely deep enough to wet your flip-flops. It doesn’t help that the only halfway realized location—the hospice itself—alternates violently between bittersweet gags featuring Kristine’s caustic treatment of everyone around her (all unforgiving, leaving Linney’s slight role out to dry) or blindsidingly cheap poignancy. We wander back over to the care facility, expecting to roll our eyes again as Linney lays into another unsuspecting nurse or grief counselor, and then the overbearing score kicks in to remind us how deeply sad it all is. As it’s all shot with the same sunny simplicity, the sonic gear-shift is the only stylistic tell that we should start sniffling. You can’t suddenly be serious when, at any moment, Woody Harrelson might wander over and start riffing.
Suncoast is at its worst when this tonal confusion runs headlong into the more ridiculous aspects of its subgenre’s structure. It’s actually more tolerable when the movie’s disengaged nonchalance allows its sole distinguishing element to fade harmlessly out of mind. In a movie where the central drama was engaging and nuanced, making a specific era’s hot-button issue simply another background element would be an elegant atmospheric choice. But this detail is all Suncoast has to offer. You can provide as much atmosphere as you want, but if you don’t put anything else in it, we’re just staring at air.
Director: Laura Chinn
Writer: Laura Chinn
Starring: Laura Linney, Woody Harrelson, Nico Parker
Release Date: January 21, 2024 (Sundance)
Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.
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