There is a timelessness about Low Tide that puts it apart from more forgettable crime-dramas. Swelling reds and oranges shroud the film in nostalgia and certain sequences have a dreamlike quality that hark back to simpler times. There is an ‘80s throwback with high-school-esque romances and vintage cars on the horizon, as well as a coming-of-age aesthetic which might make one think of classics from that decade like Stand By Me (1986). And yet, there is a more penetrative reach through the annals of American history which at times had me feeling like I was watching a modern retelling of a social realist tragedy from the nineteenth century. Time may be malleable but place is not: the aforementioned nation is on full display as it is dissected for all to see with admirable subtlety. As social commentary, it works: there can never be enough films which raise important issues through well-chosen metaphor. Despite one issue I had with plot coherence, this is a very well-made little indie picture with a lot going on beneath its eponymous surface.
The plot draws from the well-known genre trope of friends who stumble across some kind of treasure which forever alters the group’s dynamic and ultimately poses a threat to their survival. Greed, friendship and the corruptibility of money are the inevitable themes attached to this story, and this film does run the risk of feeling like a retread of staples like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and A Simple Plan (1998). Fortunately, Low Tide simultaneously honours those films whilst finding its own personality in less obvious hues that it takes time to marinate in. The group of friends here is comprised of teenagers Red, Smitty, Alan and Alan’s younger brother, Peter (played by Alex Neustaedter, Daniel Zolghadri, Keean Johnson and Jaeden Martell, respectively), and we watch as their initial series of house burglaries leads them to a fortune no one bargained for.
Perhaps the beauty of this premise is how simplistic it is: it can be a springboard that allows other elements to flourish. In this case, each character is carefully distinguished: take Alan, whose burgeoning adulthood is forcing him to make life-defining decisions. We view him as the hero as his arc is the most transformative, almost akin to a redemption narrative. His romantic interest in Mary (Kristine Froseth) also makes him the Romeo to her Juliet who we can root for, and the personal injustice he suffers puts him in line with traditional working-class heroes played by the likes of Marlon Brando and James Dean. Peter, however, is the film’s moral compass, and provides us with its intelligent and optimistic heart. Smitty is harder to pin down - his distinctive voice and coarse naturalism often reminding me of experienced character actors from older peer groups. Lastly, Red, the wild card, has a great menace to him which Neustaedter embodies entirely, possessing the spirit of a younger, more unhinged Matthew McConaughey or Patrick Swayze, or even a River Phoenix. These young male actors blend into their roles extremely well and make one hopeful about the future of this generation’s on-screen talent.
Here is a film which necessarily lays its foundation on its characters whom we then watch as they deal with their new-found situation in different ways. In this sense, it resembles a parable about morality but that might imply one-dimensional character motivations. Instead, writer-director Kevin McCullen feeds his story with more ambiguity and biting political subtext. The town sheriff (Shea Whigham), for example, assures Alan early on that Red ending up in prison is unavoidable – a wink at an underlying theme of how lives can be warped by systemic factors beyond one's control.
The New Jersey beach setting acts like a forgotten island in a sea of wealthy cities like Elizabeth and New York - the boys even have a name for those middle-class outsiders. Theirs is a labour town, and the initial choice to rob people for extra money seals their fate before the story even begins. Life in the Iron Mills (1861), a devastating story about industrial workers in nineteenth century America who turn to thievery, and John Steinbeck’s The Pearl (1947) seem like clear touchstones when viewing McMullen’s similarly futile vision of American capitalism. What’s interesting is how in 2019, after an interval of years uncannily similar to that which separates those two works, we are hearing the exact same message yet again.
McCullen does well to justify why such a bruising topic as the relationship between poverty and crime needs regular revisits in media simply by presenting modern realities in a sympathetic way. The fact McCullen himself was raised in Ocean County, New Jersey undoubtedly lends itself to the film’s biographical nature – the sweltering heat that these people endure feels lived-in. That same heat encapsulates feelings of desperation and the yearning for economic relief which sadly may never come; the evolving red colour palette reflects rising tensions not just in the story but within a society as a whole.
A final caveat comes toward the end with an ironic rendition of God Bless America taking place during The Fourth of July celebrations. After the culminating violence that just happens between our protagonists should we really be thanking an institution that has sat idly by, the absent character in a story in which its people have turned against each other in the pursuit of self-gain? Should it really be called Independence Day when there are people confined to a system which perpetuates self-oppression? Tonally, it calls back to a tender scene between Alan and Mary as they ascend on a Ferris wheel; it’s a brief glimpse of kinghood for Alan as he rises above everything: his insecurities, anxieties. A flash of the American Dream, or, at least, the promise of a better life that they could have achieved, together perhaps, had circumstances been different. It’s a fleeting moment, and he is brought back down to earth in due time. After all, it’s just a ride.
Without focusing too much time on a relatively small gripe I had involving how a character made it to a certain location and whether this could have been made clearer to the audience, Low Tide succeeds at many things; not least of which being an exercise in tautness made all the more appealing by an appropriately taut 86 minute runtime. An expediency to the editing also helps the plot fly along in a way that naturally draws you in. It pays homage to an array of films and literary works - which fall somewhere on the genre spectrum between coming-of-age and social realism - whose values are synthesised in a way that feels fresh. Come to think of it, The Florida Project (2017) would not do badly as a companion piece. The title itself, Low Tide, already having connotations of scarcity, finds newer meanings when the film is viewed as an exposé on the gritty underbelly of working-class culture; much like how shrinking tides can expose unsightly, debris-strewn shorelines. What is also evident from spending some time with this film is that it, too, has hidden depth.