Trey Edward Shults’ Waves is leaving Netflix this month – watch it before it’s gone forever.
2019 was a truly exceptional year for cinema. Parasite, Joker, 1917, Knives Out, Little Women and Jojo Rabbit were among the features on the lips of film fans and critics the world over, but those final pre-pandemic months proved something of a purple patch for independent movies, too. Titles distributed by commercial favourite A24 were particularly popular, and nestled alongside the studio’s star-studded offerings – specifically Uncut Gems, Midsommar and The Lighthouse – was Trey Edward Shults’ underappreciated family drama Waves, which is currently streaming on Netflix in the UK until June 17, 2022. Before the film returns to relative obscurity, then, we thought we’d take a moment to give Waves its long-overdue moment in the sun, and remind you of the dwindling opportunity to catch one of recent cinema’s true hidden gems. Let’s kick off with a brief plot summary: Waves is, quite literally, a film of two halves. A then-and-now narrative focuses first on the plight of angsty teen Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a promising athlete who struggles to navigate the pressures of young love, high school and his father’s overbearing eye. Proceedings then switch to the perspective of Tyler’s younger sister, Emily (Taylor Russell), who is left to cope with the repercussions of events (read: bad things) that unfold in the opening 60 minutes. Beyond its relatively predictable domestic story, though, Waves places equal emphasis on being a sensory experience, one driven by hypnotic visuals and a dazzling soundtrack (Frank Ocean, Kanye West and Radiohead all feature) that drops you straight in the deep end of one family’s struggle to deal with pain and loss in suburban America. In fact, we’d go so far as to describe Waves as an unofficial companion piece to Euphoria – and not just because actress Alexa Demie stars as a near-identical character in both (but more on that later). To get a quick sense of the movie’s style, check out its trailer below:
Now writing with our pretentious movie critic hat on, director Shults’ splicing of the film works to highlight both the lasting effects of tragedy and the imperfect, but ultimately restorative, nature of family – which is to say that Waves is a very sad movie.
