Trey Edward Shults
54 connections found
Filmography
View:
Connections, in both directions
Shults ( Krisha , It Comes At Night ) front-loads his story with so much feverish plotting and kinetic camerawork that that reach sometimes threatens to subsume it; it’s hard not be reminded of recent (and more fully realized) indie touchstones like Andrea Arnold’s American Honey , another film that soaked itself in the visual and musical language of contemporary youth culture, or Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight , whose Florida setting held a sort of dreamlike sway over nearly every scene.
There are shades of Moonlight (2016) and American Honey (2016) throughout: Shults grasps for a feeling of reckless abandon and “head dangling out the window of a speeding car” joyfulness, but struggles to replicate any of their mutual depth.
Set in South Florida — not so far from the microcosm Barry Jenkins illuminated in “Moonlight,” though a world apart in terms of social class and opportunity — “Waves” bends and surprises, radiates and engulfs, in a dizzying and ecstatic attempt to capture the love and pain and pressure visited upon a contemporary American family — an African American family, to be precise.
From the surface, Waves is another familial tale of tragedy and heartache, with the initial hallmarks and visual palette of a Barry Jenkin’s film, but Waves isn’t trying to be a mere imitation of Moonlight .
Like Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight from 2016, Waves is an accomplishment that belies the filmmaker’s relative inexperience; with just a few films to his name to date, this latest arrives as a declaration of vision, both cinematically and narratively.
Here, he’s doing it to capture the woozy feel of Tyler’s teenage hormones, and the result reminds you of Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk in its rapturous depiction of black life, and the ways in which adolescent emotions can lead to disaster.
The Witch (2016)
Directed by Robert Eggers
influenced It Comes at Night (2017), Waves (2019)
Themes Visuals
Like It Follows (2014) and last year’s The Witch, it probably won’t be to every horror fan’s taste—it’s a stylish, masterfully wrenching plunge into dire circumstances that turn human drama into horror and bring out the monstrosities of survival.
Like The Witch , It Comes at Night is an object lesson in how to stylize asceticism.
In its chills-over-scares approach, it’s reminiscent of fellow A24 release The Witch, though it’s even more vague in its storytelling then that already dreamy, atmosphere-heavy film.
The picture is part of the new breed of horror films that has emerged from the shadows in recent years, chilly little burnt offerings like The Babadook, The Witch and It Follows.
It’s an appropriate new entry in the ever-expanding roster of producer and distributor A24, which also handled horror breakout “The Witch,” another effective dose of minimalist horror told in the confines of an eerie, isolated forest.
Horror fans frequently debate whether the horror films distributed by A24 — which include The Witch, Green Room, and Under the Skin — are made for mainstream moviegoers or for a more esoteric, indie film–loving set .
Shults ( Krisha , It Comes At Night ) front-loads his story with so much feverish plotting and kinetic camerawork that that reach sometimes threatens to subsume it; it’s hard not be reminded of recent (and more fully realized) indie touchstones like Andrea Arnold’s American Honey , another film that soaked itself in the visual and musical language of contemporary youth culture, or Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight , whose Florida setting held a sort of dreamlike sway over nearly every scene.
There are shades of Moonlight (2016) and American Honey (2016) throughout: Shults grasps for a feeling of reckless abandon and “head dangling out the window of a speeding car” joyfulness, but struggles to replicate any of their mutual depth.
With remnants of Moonlight, Luce, and American Honey sprinkled throughout, Trey Edward Shults pays tribute to great independent films and filmmakers while also bringing to life an unforgettable story of his own that will leave a long-lasting impact on anyone who sees it.
It’s both joyful and nerve racking, Tyler’s distracted driving combined with limbs exposed outside his car projecting a “Hereditary” vibe.
As with his contemporaries Robert Eggers ("The Witch," "The Lighthouse") and Ari Aster ("Hereditary," "Midsommar"), he is one of a new generation of filmmakers that is showing great care in crafting his films.
A24 Films, the production company most notable for churning out hits like Lady Bird , Moonlight , Eighth Grade , and Hereditary , brings us the film Waves — starring Sterling K. Brown, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Lucas Hedges, and Taylor Russell.
Waves is oddly closest to Hereditary in how a sense of dread manifests from within the family.
A combination of Jonathan Demme’s jittery Rachel Getting Married and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s energetic Birdman , this indie has verve to spare and features a razor-sharp cast that’s largely nonprofessional.
Jonathan Demme explored similar territory in his 2008 film Rachel Getting Married, and Trey Edward Shults’ debut film does have a similar looseness to it, a feeling that anything can happen at any time.
Named for its central agent of chaos, herself named for the terrific unknown actress who plays her, Krisha may be the most explosive family-reunion drama since Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married —another film, incidentally, about a difficult, destructive relative seeking forgiveness, even as she teeters on the precipice of a relapse.
He attends a Full Metal Jacket -worthy high-school wrestling practice that feels like a militaristic gladiator training camp, with young men being primed for assault.
Then, once it makes its big mid-film fracture, not unlike the radical shifts in narrative perspective seen in films like “Psycho” or “Full Metal Jacket,” the film dials virtually all of its stylistic excesses back to zero for a more naturalistic approach closer in tone to something from the likes of Terrence Malick or the more lyrical works of David Gordon Green.
His wrestling coach addresses his students like R. Lee Ermey from Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Ronald pushes him towards hyper-masculine perfectionism.
It Comes at Night, on the other hand, can’t help but veer into thematic territory that’s been explored ad nauseum in everything from Night of Living Dead and The Road to The Stand and The Walking Dead.
Paul, a quiet man belying his short fuse, preaches the priorities of family, but his paranoia speaks for itself: Travis is everything that matters to his parents, and, like the son in The Road, he represents all that’s worth preserving after the world ends.
An indie, post-apocalyptic drama recalling John Hillcoat’s neglected “The Road,” “It Comes at Night” was written and directed by Texan prodigy Trey Edward Shults, whose 2015 release “Krisha,” a film about the baddest bad sheep you’ve ever met, is even scarier than “It Comes at Night.”
It Comes at Night is a movie for those who found The Road excessively sentimental.
With his mandatory father-son weightlifting sessions and refusal to brook the slightest rebellion, Ronald is a sports-dad nightmare up there with Karl Malden in “Fear Strikes Out,” but part of the tragedy is that we understand him.
And while neither are what I would call narratively surreal, It Comes at Night does, spookily, administer a desolate like atmosphere, reminiscent of David Lynch’s Eraserhead.
There are shades of Requiem For A Dream in some moments, where everything that can go wrong does go wrong to an almost absurdly overwrought degree.
There are moments in this ambitious film that evoke the wrenching dread of Aronofsky's addiction horror Requiem for a Dream, as it seems things can't get worse, and then they do.
Sharing more similarities with 2015's quiet apocalyptic indie " Z for Zachariah " than the film its teaser trailer and promotional materials most resemble, 2004's M. Night Shyamalan thriller " The Village ," the film certainly conjures an unsettling aura but does so at a deliberate tempo where its characters' emotional journey and insular world takes precedence over predictable genre tactics.
The film’s nearest analogue is probably Craig Zobel’s underlooked 2015 thriller , Z for Zachariah, though that film—troubled with unease as it is—looks downright gentle compared to Shults’s harrowing chamber piece.
Psychological trauma isn’t exactly untrammelled territory as far as dystopias are concerned, with “The Walking Dead,” Z for Zachariah, Snowpiercer and the Hunger Games movies all touching on that subject to varying degrees just within the last several years.
From “Z for Zachariah” to “The Survivalist,” minimalist post-apocalyptic survival stories have repeatedly gone underseen, in part because they don’t entirely fulfill the potential of their central conceit.
While “It Comes at Night” bears similarities to such recent films as “10 Cloverfield Lane” and the little-seen post-apocalyptic drama “Z for Zachariah” — all are about strangers in close quarters after the social fabric has been ripped to shreds — “Night” lacks the fantastical elements of the former and is more tensely terrifying than the latter.
Sharing more similarities with 2015's quiet apocalyptic indie " Z for Zachariah " than the film its teaser trailer and promotional materials most resemble, 2004's M. Night Shyamalan thriller " The Village ," the film certainly conjures an unsettling aura but does so at a deliberate tempo where its characters' emotional journey and insular world takes precedence over predictable genre tactics.
Funny how, in spite of how fresh the movie feels throughout, I still kept expecting the plot to lead to a paltry, Shyamalan-esque climax akin to The Village .
Midway through “Waves,” Shults elbows Tyler aside to refocus on his sister — a shift as radical as what follows the shower scene in “Psycho,” and for which he was inspired by the bifurcated structure of Wong Kar-wai’s “Chungking Express.”
“I remember seeing Chungking Express .
If you saw “The Place Beyond the Pines,” you may remember the way that excellent picture embarked on a new story path when most films wouldn’t dare a such a thing.
Minus Russell’s complicated yet uplifting work as Emily, the film would still be a knockout coming-of-age story, but with her damaged optimism, razor-sharp edits that echo Terrence Malick’s best work, and a structure that recalls The Place Beyond the Pines , Waves organically builds to gigantic moments, bolstered by powerful mini-explosions along the way.
It's like he watched Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers several thousand times to prepare for making a family melodrama.
The first half shares some of the sexed-up, Florida-humid flamboyance that production designer Elliott Hostetter helped bring to Spring Breakers (whose director, Harmony Korine, cameos here).
He’s borrowed Harmony Korine’s production designer from “Spring Breakers” and put Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross in charge of the score.
Waves will likely be overlooked this year as the most recent film in the A24 “Florida Series,” including the experimental and pretty films Moonlight , Spring Breakers , and The Florida Project .
That’s the widdershins message of Krisha director Shults’ sophomore feature, a severely downbeat, cabin-in-the-woods horror show that entwines the claustrophobic paranoia of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead with the locked-door tension of Roger Corman’s Day the World Ended and a febrile case of Cabin Fever to boot.
Podemos después venir hasta On Golden Pond (EUA, 1981) en la que Mark Rydell basado en la obra de teatro de Ernest Thompson juega y manipula las reconciliaciones familiares a través de situaciones casi improbables: el optimismo hacia el futuro, la creencia en la reconciliación insospechada.
At times, those cues — made seamless by composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (“The Social Network”) — feel like one with the film’s sound design, echoing the buzz of a vibrating cellphone or a series of background beeps, whereas at others, they represent what words can’t convey, as in twin scenes when Tyler and Emily use drugs, leaning out the passenger windows of their respective vehicles.
Once again collaborating, what they bring to Waves is reminiscent of their past cinematic efforts (The Social Network) whereas Trent Reznor seems to be tapping back into the kind of haunting thrashing that informed his output during the darker times of his life, fitting the ruinous rage and anger progressively emanating from Kelvin Harrison Jr.’s Tyler.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, whose most famous compositions include The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Social Network , add a brooding undercurrent to the cathartic foreground, while the killer soundtrack adds bounce.
Shults distinguishes Tyler and Emily’s stories visually, sonically and tonally, yet connects them through an evolving score by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross ("The Social Network") and several story callbacks.
The thrilling and dynamic score, by Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross ("The Social Network"), aids mercilessly in providing narrative tension.
Though its tone is more severe and high-tension, Waves has an energy that recalls American Graffiti —a portrait of a generation on the brink of … something.
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Directed by George A. Romero
influenced It Comes at Night (2017)
Themes Characters Visuals
Scarefests from Night of the Living Dead to The Walking Dead have covered this territory, but not like Shults does.
In many ways, “It Comes at Night” also recalls the granddaddy of all “Living Dead” films, “Night of the Living Dead,” especially insofar as its protagonist is an African-American male — Travis’ parents are interracial — but even that detail makes us worry even more for Travis if you think about it.
The stark, somber story bears echoes of everything from Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” to George Romero’s splatterific zombie epics (“Night of the Living Dead” looms particularly large here), but what sets “It Comes at Night” apart from those post-apocalyptic forebears is its radical narrative economy.
It’s boarded up as tight as the home in “Night of the Living Dead” — or, one hopes, more so — and the family has a strict regimen to get through the day.
There are no news broadcasts to tell us and the isolated rural characters about the unfolding global threat as there were in "Signs" and "Night of the Living Dead."