‘Hot Summer Nights’ Review: Dealing Weed, Heat, And Hurricanes

Hot Summer Nights Review
4.2
out of 5

The new film Hot Summer Nights is supposedly based off a true story — or parts of it are true, at least — as told by someone who witnessed it all. The narrator, a nameless kid in the small Massachusetts beach town of Cape Cod, sets up the players in this coming-of-age crime drama by telling us all about what happened in his own, 1990’s child-like way, you know, before the internet, iPhones, and the PS4 and Xbox One. This is but one of the many unique aspects to the film.

First time writer/director Elijah Bynum and his story of two teenagers who become friends, build a drug empire, and then watch it all crumble down and wash away during the real-life 1991 Hurricane Bob is compelling, to say the very least. Strong performances by an unknown-at-the-time Timothee Chalamet (the film was made in 2016 and hit the festival circuit in 2017), and Alex Roe, help build up this unique friendship that is ultimately spoiled after Chalamet’s Daniel decides to strike up a forbidden love affair with the sister of Roe’s Hunter Strawberry. This dynamic, more so than the marijuana empire the two build over the course of the summer, is what is most gut-wrenching.


Hot Summer Nights Review

Hot Summer Nights opens with Daniel (Chalamet) being sent to Cape Cod for the summer by his mother (Jeanine Serralles). He begrudgingly goes, mostly to get away from the memories of his recently departed father, but also to get away from his nagging mom. In Cape Cod, Daniel gets a job at a gas station where he meets Hunter (Roe), a local boy who is known as a connection for weed for the summer birds — the rich, white people who “summer at the cape.” These two strike up a friendship and quickly build up a small-time syndicate with the help of Daniel’s cousin, Taylor (Thomas Blake, Jr.), and supplied by the dangerous Dex (Emery Cohen).

Daniel also meets the gorgeous McKayla (Maika Monroe), the girl all the boys in town love, and whose reputation definitely proceeds her at every step. Soon, Daniel learns that McKayla is Hunter’s sister and is forbidden from ever seeing her, as Hunter wants her as clear from his criminal lifestyle as can be. Unfortunately, Daniel doesn’t listen, and his betrayal sets off a storm — both figuratively and literally — as the summer calendar turns to August.

Hot Summer Nights Review

While all the pieces are in place for a classic teen coming-of-age tale told in a sleepy summer resort town, writer-director Bynum turns it all on its head by avoiding all the cliches that we all see coming and pushing Hot Summer Nights more into the territory of Scorsese’s Goodfellas and less of a Stand By Me-like period story of growing up. And it works. All of it.

The avant garde directing style and cinematography, partnered with some excellent period music — and we’re not talking about huge hits for cheap nostalgia — really help to make Hot Summer Nights more than a film festival darling, and more of a film that stands on its own two legs. The young cast comes through in every way, and even the veteran presence of Thomas Jane as a local cop, who happens to be the father of Amy (Maia Mitchell), Hunter’s equally forbidden girlfriend, can’t stop these young actors from owning this film from the first frame to the last.

Hot Summer Nights Review

Hot Summer Nights presents itself as a film going in one direction, but it’s all a lie — in a good way — and ends up being something else entirely. Elijah Bynum may have very well created the perfect calling card for a film career that needs to go places, as his gift of deep, cinematic storytelling is deliciously inviting and I want more.

Hot Summer Nights is rated R and opens in select theaters on July 27. If it doesn’t open near you, it is also part of the DirecTV Cinema showcase.

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