'Shithouse' Review
NRRuntime: 1 Hr and 40 MinutesProduction Companies: N/ADistributor: N/ADirector: Cooper RaiffWriter: Cooper RaiffCast: Dylan Gelula, Cooper Raiff, Amy Landecker, Logan Miller, Abby Quinn, Joy SundayRelease Date: N/A
Among thousands of kids trying their best to make college work, Alex feels alone and depressed. Home is 1,500 miles away and he's struggling to find a reason not to go back. Maggie, Alex's sophomore RA, has been crushing college since day one. Today though, Maggie is dealt an unexpected loss. After a party at Shithouse, Maggie wants some company and finds it in Alex. Two young people raised in very different households, Alex and Maggie challenge each other and grow up together.
A few days prior to the announcement that SXSW would be canceled, I went to a pre-screening of one of the narrative competition features called Shithouse by 22-year-old first-time filmmaker Cooper Raiff. The film is based on his personal college experience and, as someone who’s still attending college, I find that this movie rings true to Gen-Z’s navigation of it all while being far from home. Through freshman Alex (Raiff), a Texan who attends a university in LA, you’re put in the passenger seat as you witness the rough transition to college life that most of our generation can relate to. He’s unable to confide in his roommate (played by Logan Miller, who’s been portraying the same character in his features lately but is always so damn funny), calls his mom every time he’s alone, and talks to his emotional support stuffed animal. Most of the actions Raiff bleeds into Alex are elements that many college students, including myself, have either experienced or witnessed.
The most emotionally triggering element comes when carefree, straight-laced Maggie (Dylan Gelula), his sophomore RA, enters the picture. The two begin a budding romance and bounce off each other very well and the dialogue written by Raiff makes it even more authentic. Aside from the script and the narrative flow, the performances by Gelula and Raiff carry the film. A good portion of it focuses on their blossoming relationship and it cleverly builds momentum, adding brushstrokes to a much larger and relative picture. The awkward pauses in the middle of their dialogue, the nervous chuckles they share, and the glances they give each other really took me back to my own personal experiences. It felt as if these characters were real people because I’ve been in their shoes in some capacity, primarily Alex. Especially when he discovers how it feels to be gaslit for the first time. You understand where both parties are coming from and you really invest in them, even when their innermost flaws begin to show. Place this next to Eighth Grade as the socially awkward, postmodern, digital-age double feature. I tell ya what, out of all the coming of age comedies that take place in college, this might be the most accurate depiction I’ve ever seen.
I wrote down my initial flaws regarding the editing and how jarring some of the cuts were; sometimes the leads looked like they weren’t even occupying the same space as the people they were interacting with. That was until I got to talk to Cooper Raiff after the film. He told me that he edited the entire film himself. According to Raiff, the original cut was over two hours and thirty minutes long. That is a major friggin’ feat. To direct, write and star in your first feature is impressive enough, but to edit your acting in your own movie, looking at your own takes and figure out the pacing is something I absolutely admire. Now, while I am curious about one day seeing the extended Shithouse cut, the fact that he was able to cut this entire story down from over 140 minutes of footage to 100 is incredible. This is a slight nitpick, but up and coming actress Abby Quinn is in this movie for like 2 minutes and then she disappears. A ton of recognizable faces are present in this film, and she caught me by surprise but by the time I went, “Hey, is that Abby Qui--” she was gone! That was like a cameo! Maybe there’s more of her in the “director’s cut”.At the end of the day, Shithouse finds first time feature filmmaker Cooper Raiff handing out his calling card through this very distinct and relatable rom-com college comedy well-suited for our times, resulting in a great college comedy that truly defines our generation. Rating: 4/5 | 81%
