Rating: 5/5
In the summer of 1981, Brian Lackey, then 8 years old, lost five hours of his life. His sister, Deborah, found him in the closet wearing his Little League uniform, blood trickling out of his nose. He remembers that and standing on the roof with his sister and mother as a UFO passes over them.
In the summer of 1981, Neil McCormick, then 8 years old, came for the first time while watching his mom and her then-boyfriend, Alfred, hook up outside. When Neil’s mom signed him up for Little League, Neil fell head over heels for his coach, who strongly resembled the men he’d seen in his mom’s Playgirls and like Alfred. The coach also fell for Neil, as he became a star player, earning him a night alone with the Coach, eating pizza and playing video games. This leads to recording Neil’s voice and taking photos of him. One night led to many more. This happened before the night he watched his mom and Alfred.
In October 1983, Neil met Wendy Peterson, who was one year older than him. They became the closest of friends. They torture a kid by putting firecrackers in his mouth and lighting them. When the shards embedded in the kid’s face, Neil jerked the boy off, just like Coach had shown him. Brian lost his glasses and got lost in the woods, where a mysterious figure approached him, triggering his nosebleeds. He awoke an hour later, unsure but convinced that this moment was connected to the one from two years ago. Brian needed to figure out what had happened. He believes his answer may be in the stars and among extraterrestrials.
The film follows Neil, Brian, and Wendy into their teens and all the tiny tragedies that come with it.
Shoegaze showers and drowns us throughout, pulsing and gushing like an open wound. The surreal becomes not just an uncanny experience but a very real one in which a character shifts, rationalizes, or misunderstands.
I’m happy I read about how they filmed the grooming and child abuse to protect the kids. They filmed a lot of scenes with characters facing the camera, and the kids were never in the same room when the adults said the fucked up stuff. The staring into the camera becomes a motif.
The transitions fade to black or the quickest crossfade, creating the sense of lost or disoriented time.
Men like Neil and Brian’s coach really fuck up a kid’s sense of what is safe touch and what isn’t. It becomes hard to trust an innocent hug from their father or even say goodbye to a friend. What is soothing and what is sexual is all bundled up, making intimacy and authenticity challenging to present, let alone parse. How do you learn who you can trust?
Lest you think this is a bleak drama, this is Gregg Araki we’re talking about. His sense of humor comes through in classically unusual ways. The film has a deep empathy for its characters, and while it isn’t afraid to break our hearts, it isn’t trying to torture us. He’s giving some of us that meaningful reminder that we’re not the only ones with fucked up childhoods—that other people also spent too much of their life waiting for someone else’s ship to land.
Everyone is sooo good in this! I am always happy to see Michelle Trachtenberg and Mary Lynn Rajskub. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is at his all-time peak here. Jeffrey Licon is so adorable.
I love Brian and Eric’s friendship!!
Jesus Christ, this is traumatic. But also really, really cathartic.