Sundance 2024 Review: “Suncoast” – An Above Average Submission!

Coming-of-age is a difficult genre to take on, writers often digging themselves into holes of clichés with dialogue that feels like a 50-year old trying to write teenagers. Oftentimes these films hit the mark because of its execution or misses it completely, drowning itself in an ocean with other failed submissions.

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Suncoast follows Doris (Nico Parker), a high school student caught between wanting to live a “normal” teenage life all while dealing with taking care of her brother Max (Cree Kawa), who has a serious illness preventing him from walking, speaking, or seeing. Kristine (Laura Linney) is her struggling mother who makes the difficult decision to admit Max into a specialized facility because of his condition.

Also starring Woody Harrelson as Paul, a protester outside Max’s facility, surrounding a famous medical case, Suncoast has a number of elements that can distinguish itself from the genre. Unfortunately, this movie opts to focus more on its cliched high school plot points in favor of its deeper examination of a mother and daughter living with a brother, and son, whose illness has taken his humanity away from him.

Woody Harrelson’s character Paul tells Doris early on that she may be trying to be normal, but she isn’t. She is a young woman faced with a tragedy no person should have to face, especially at her age. Although a story that focuses solely on a tragic illness can be tiresome, Suncoast decides not to investigate the one element the story creates to differentiate itself from teenage films. Max’s illness could have expanded the story to bring up a number of significant and heart wrenching themes.

However, Suncoast decides to go against Paul’s words and focus on tiresome high school conventions with dialogue and situations that will make anyone’s eyes roll. What could have delved into subtle instances of a girl in pain awaiting her brother’s death, after living at least 12 or so years with him living without his condition, opts for parties and boy drama. The film opens up a box of unanswered questions about Max and Doris’s relationship and fails to deliver much value around this topic.

The film touches on Laura Linney’s relationship with Max and Doris separately, clearly focusing more of her energy on Max. Seeing a mother in such anguish, focused on her son, while the audience sees Doris’s pain feeling removed from her mother because of her lack of participation in her upbringing is only lightly examined, which poses an extreme disservice to the film. A navigation of being a parent of a boy on the verge of death and a daughter just beginning to live is a goldmine of a coming-of-age theme, with the ability to pull on the audience’s hearts indefinitely. Again, Suncoast seems to think this is not as beneficial to the story as Doris’s teenage rebellion.

Woody Harrelson has the ability to light up the screen in any film. His charisma is undeniable and this shows in Suncoast at times, but is extremely limited. Paul is a religious man against the assisted suicide of a woman in a popular medical case, and therefore develops a mentoring relationship with Doris when she visits Max at the specialized facility. His own personal obstacles as it pertains to his deceased wife and faith is minimized to a couple of lines in the film and his relationship with Doris therefore feels like it should have either been more developed or deleted from the film altogether.

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It is heavy enough that not going through with either of these plot points makes the film feel like it is relaxing on the surface. Aside from the film’s downfalls, there are subtle moments that capture the audience even if they are all too brief. Keyla Monterroso Mejia as Nurse Mia at Max’s facility in her three or so minutes on screen brings the tears in ways the entire film wasn’t able to do to its fullest.

The moments outside of Doris in high school are what gives the movie its most striking features. Enough so where any time we left these profound moments for high school English class it felt utterly disappointing. Suncoast strikes some chords that allow it to pass as a slightly above average submission into the genre but its obvious shortcomings are hard to ignore.

‘Suncoast’ Rating – 3/5

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