On a beach road, a teenage boy and his mother hit something with their car - she insists it was nothing, but as the night unfolds the boy begins to doubt her story.
Outer Banks (2020-) knows its audience: young adults in a country that can’t stop romanticizing good ole’ treasure hunts. Add a little of Riverdale’s (2017-) sex appeal, and no one can look away. Forty years after The Goonies (1985) America’s consciousness hasn’t strayed from the same tropes: treasure hunts, a vulnerable white male lead, and the whitewashing of a racially segregated setting.
A trouble-making teenager spends the summer working at a Southern California beach learning about responsibility.
The film seems like an extreme interpretation of the conspiracy theorists that exist in real life. And then, there’s the twist.
I hadn’t heard of it either until recently—and yet, it’s one of the highest grossing movies of all time.
I’m still trying to comprehend the psychological and moral implications of their fascination with each other, or why their almost written-in-the-stars depth of connection makes so much sense.
These confines won’t really encourage you to read the film as a metaphor for the nerve-inducing experience we’ve all been through over the last year, however — and in the interest of maintaining your dignity, you probably shouldn’t. While the sociopolitical commentary may have worked for the similarly-themed Buried (2010), in which we find Ryan Reynolds on his own buried alive in the Middle East, but this futuristic take on the premise is best left as a piece of distracting entertainment. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is no less suffocating, literally and dramatically.
