S__thouse

I know that, earlier this summer, people could not get enough of the successes of Curry Barker and Kane Parsons, two twentysomething guys who took over the box office with “Obsession” and “Backrooms”, respectively. I could never take away from their accomplishments, particularly with everyone now hoping to get into the business with younger and younger filmmakers. But to be fair, Parsons’ film is based on his own internet-based IP. And for whatever choice Barker made to call his film “Obsession”, he didn’t have the guts to call his film “S___thouse” like Cooper Raiff, even though Raiff was only 22 when he made his first film and sent it out to festivals. And unlike those slackers Curry and Kane, Raiff actually stars in his movie.

“S__thouse” is not a genre film like those aforementioned pictures. This is a small, intimate affair. Because this is BACK TO SCHOOL WEEK, the stakes in these sorts of films are fairly low. Here, it’s about just one lonely boy. Raiff is Alex, a young kid in his freshman year at university. He can’t find an opening to ever say the right thing, so most of his time is spent going to places and watching other people have fun. Raiff has a flawless blank stare, like he’s eternally watching a train refuse to stop for him. If he didn’t become a filmmaker, I’m sure he would have had a successful career as an actor in commercials who experiences so much misfortune he has no choice but to invest in the product being sold.

Alex does score with Maggie, and I use the term “score” lightly. She’s the R.A. of his dorm. The movie doesn’t go into it in great detail, but this is also an alienating position for her. Yes, she’s a student on campus, but she’s also something of a narc. Dylan Gelula gives Alex an outer sheen of xennial sarcasm, but you can sense she’s almost halfway through college and the picture hasn’t become that much clearer. To Maggie, Alex is just a cute little fling. To Alex, Maggie has become his salvation, the answer to his loneliness, a love affair, a union that spans time. Finally, he can call his mother at home (Amy Landecker) and he doesn’t have to lie or invent a friend.

Of course, it’s going to be a while before Alex really picks up what Maggie is putting down. Until then, Alex tries to navigate campus life. Gradually, he finds himself speaking less and less to the stuffed animal he’s brought from home – which talks back and gives inspirational advice via subtitles, an affectation that could be something worth pursuing psychologically, though it is not that kind of movie. There are frat parties and open mics, and people scrambling to meet their buddies and get wasted. Along the way, Alex whines in a way that is both intolerable and relatable, the feeling of a kid, not yet a man, who is so far from home.”Saturday Night Live”’s Ashley Padilla surfaces in a small role. I missed them, but apparently Ayo Edibiri and “Sorry, Baby” star Eva Victor are in here somewhere too. This is a very prestigious college.

The most amusing relationship is probably between Alex and his roommate, a life of the party type played by Logan Miller. I knew this guy in college. I probably was this guy in college. The typical college movie would have two roommates not being able to get along. I’m pretty sure Netflix just released that movie a couple of months ago, and it was called “Roommates”. But this is the more realistic version – two guys going to college for completely different reasons, guys who can recognize early on they have no chemistry but are determined to make some sort of manufactured friendship work. Miller’s Sam exists on the periphery of the storyline, like he’s always ready to do a bit he hasn’t yet articulated in his head. He’s the life of the party, just ask him – when he gets to the party and also did you give him directions, he’s probably going to get lost.

“S__thouse” has a small cameo by Jay Duplass, and it’s very much in the spirit of the Duplass Brothers films in its mumblecore trappings, with a side of John Hughes nostalgia. It’s not terribly deep stuff, but it doesn’t have to be. This isn’t college as a nonstop fight for survival, this is college for a privileged white kid who is still sort of a sweetheart but who just can’t move to the speed of daily activities and everyday melodramas now dominating his life when he was previously concerned with sharing lasagna with his bratty little sister. Any critic could be mean about the Zach Braff-adjacent twee appeal of this picture. But this was a young twentysomething who got a movie with an epithet in its title in theaters during the pandemic. Respect is owed.

I went to college when I was young, wasted my time, made the wrong decisions, took shortcuts. It’s a time that I remember fondly, though it was littered with the sort of bad decisions that make me wonder exactly how I’m even alive today. Living on campus made for a small, structured lifestyle, one exciting as a kid and limiting as an adult. Everything was provided to you in an enclosed space, but you had to be mindful of hours. You were there for your own educational benefit, but in a way, you were serving older masters, specifically the professors who had to give you a passing grade and the dean who tsk-tsked when he walked past your dirty dorm room. What’s curious in my older age is how many of my college thoughts are actually prison thoughts.

Sometimes when I dream, there is a moment when I have to stop and wonder, is this prison, or is this college? Part of that comes from the schedule of being in a wide open space, but having to be mindful of the time, because doors will open, and then doors will close, and there will be discipline if you are late. In prison, the compound opens for you to move freely, but you generally only get ten minutes, with a two-minute warning, before you get to where you need to go. It’s the same principle if you have a 1:15 class for which you’ve studied little. I’m not saying college is as unfortunate a place as prison. But I am saying that there are enough similarities that, if you have any negative feelings about a college campus as a closed space, you will begin to conflate the two in your memory. This may be exclusive to me – I’ve never spoken to anyone about it. But I can’t shake the feeling inside a dream of entering a library or a dining hall and wondering, is this school, or is this prison? Perhaps they are my own peccadillos. Because being late to get back inside in prison, and being late to turn in a poorly-written paper in a class I am already failing, can often feel like the same threat when my eyes are closed.