This review contains spoilers for Suncoast.
While movies about grief often use their visuals to translate the depth of the characters’ emotions, Laura Chinn's semi-autobiographical Suncoast takes a whole new approach — and it makes the impact that much greater. The film takes place in sunny Florida, meaning that while the characters are just trying to make it through the day to day, they’re bathed in candy-colored shades of pink, mint, and yellow.
"It felt kind of perfect because it served as a reminder that just because incredibly depressing things are happening, life can still be just as vibrant and colorful and beautiful around you," lead actress Nico Parker tells me over Zoom. "We would go up to the monitor after each take and look at it and just kind of think, 'Wow, it looks so brilliantly alive.'”
Suncoast is perfect for anyone who misses really good coming-of-age movies (think Ladybird or The Perks of Being a Wallflower), and it's infused with the old school feel of all your favorite teen dramas (like One Tree Hill and The OC). The film follows Doris, a 2005 teen who checks her dying brother Max into the same facility housing Terri Schiavo during her landmark medical case.
Image via Eric Zachanowich/Searchlight Pictures
Rooting the story in this specific moment in time does the movie (and the viewer) a huge service because it offers the film a very explicit, and balanced, center of gravity. We don’t need a ton of exposition to understand where the characters are at, and creatively, it gives them space to breathe — and make mistakes.
While Doris is just trying to survive the drama that comes with being a 17-year-old girl, she's also navigating her mother's grief, and the stress that comes with taking care of her brother. The constant tension between Doris’ friends problems and the tragedy in her personal life propels her emotional arc without making the story feel rushed. While her friends' behavior can feel shallow and unsympathetic (I constantly found myself wishing Doris would make deeper connections with them), I realized that crushes, fashion, and parties is all that Doris might obsess over in another life and it broke my heart for her even more.
Image via Eric Zachanowich/Searchlight Pictures
Nico Parker proved her acting chops in The Last of Us (she was only in the first 30 minutes, people are still talking about it, I digress), but Suncoast serves as a leap in her career. Parker is the beating heart of the film, and moves through every moment so openly that it evokes an incredibly emotional reaction from me as a viewer. She’s heartfelt and joyful one moment, yet holds incredible emotional weight and defiant hope in the next.
Like so many of us, Doris deals with her grief by ignoring it, and in turn, she starts to avoid her brother as time goes on. But on prom night, which her friends consider "the best night of their lives," Doris finally realizes just how much she wants to say to Max before he passes. She leaves the party and has to run through a candlelight vigil for Terri Schiavo to get back to Suncoast.
The candlelight against the physical darkness, as well as the Doris' sequin dress in the middle of such a solemn moment, brings so many different things to the surface: hope in the face of tragedy, identifying what really matters to you, and even how we have to let go of what we can't control.
"Being in the prom dress, I just loved that," Parker says. "To be in this sparkly shiny thing and be this sparkly shiny thing, and be in such a state and in such a depressing atmosphere was so, so cool." The vigil feels like a setup for Doris’ own loss — this goodbye taking place as Doris fights her way to her own goodbye, and it's the scene that's stuck with me the most since watching it.
Image via Eric Zachanowich/Searchlight Pictures
For those moments she'd never experienced, Nico Parker leaned on writer-director Laura Chinn, whose life inspired the story. "She's such a well of knowledge and insightfulness," Parker says. "So, you know, her advice and wise words are endless. So it was easy."
But when it came to the ins and outs of awkward high school experience, Nico Parker was able to reflect on her own experiences, and those of the people around her. "I was 17 when we filmed and [Doris] is 17 in the film," she says. "[But] that innocence felt reminiscent of me when I was younger. And so I also tried to infuse some of my own experiences into her...It felt somewhat healing for a 14-year-old me, I think."
After prom night, as Doris and her mother prepare for summer, the bright ending touches on that candy-colored world we're introduced to in the beginning, but it's fuller now. As Doris drives off, there's a sense of expectant hope and that the future still holds good things.
This is a rare film where, more than anything, it made me truly understand how to find community in the midst of grief. It might be about a situation different than my own, but it touched a hidden part of my soul in a way I’ll talk about for a long time. This is a very healing film to watch because it felt like Suncoast — and by extent Laura Chinn and Nico Parker — holds your hand through it all.
Rapid Fire With Suncoast Actress Nico Parker
Image via Eric Zachanowich/Searchlight Pictures
Brit + Co: It's so nice to meet you Nico! I loved Suncoast so much. Honestly, I cried, like, the entire last 30 minutes of this movie. Do you have any movies that always get you when you watch them?
Nico Parker: Whoa, okay. Love that question. What always makes me cry? I just watched Grave of the Fireflies for the first time [and] I cried in a way that was like a guttural cry… I always cry at The Notebook. I mean, how could you not?
Brit + Co: Incredible answers. Suncoast and its setting is so colorful and full of life, and gave me such One Tree Hill or The OC vibes, especially since it's set in the early 2000s. What's your top teen drama recommendation?
NP: While we were filming, I was obsessed with Gilmore Girls, which I don't know how much that is a teen drama, but Chad Michael Murray is in it, which I think means that it's a teen drama…Every single night I would watch like three episodes. And then when I finished, I would just go back to the beginning and just restart...I think the first [season is my favorite] just because when I first watched it, I just couldn't believe it. I was like, "This is where I want to live."
B+C: Speaking of the 2000s, if you woke up as a teen in 2005, what's the first thing you’d do?
NP: Oh my God, try and figure out a flip phone. What is going on? They are so inconvenient. Trying to type?! Because you know how, like with the Blackberry, [each button has three letters] and you have to [press it] three times to get to the letter that you want. That is a phenomenon I have no time for...And then maybe the eyebrows. I think I want to experience the crazy thin eyebrows...but then I would also love to have the guarantee that they will grow back.
B+C: You filmed Suncoast around Charleston, which is such a fun location. Did you all do anything memorable on your days off?
NP: It was just a lot of going out to eat a lot of dinners. All of them. I honestly could like salivate now, [it’s just] insanely good. If you're ever inCharleston, just go there to eat because it was incredible.
Image via Shane Harvey/HBO
Brit + Co: A lot of our readers will recognize you from Emmy-nominated series The Last of Us. Your scenes were so memorable, and you worked with amazing people like Pedro Pascal and Gabriel Luna — do you have any funny stories from days off?
NP: One time we were in Pedro's car and he was driving...somewhere, I don’t know. And then we saw a [car wash] and I've never been in one before because that's a really American thing to do. I didn't realize that when you go in, it doesn't tell you when it's gonna go. So, at one point — it was a really intense one, it was just a lot going on — I thought it would be funny to roll down the window...It was like a nice rental car that the production had given him and I rolled down the window and it went everywhere. It was awful...I've learned the error of my ways.
Brit + Co: After working with Pedro, and now with Laura Linney and Woody Harrelson on Suncoast, do you have any dream co-stars for the future?
NP: Oh my God. Such a difficult question. I'd love to work, in a kind of similarly gawk-out way, I'd love to work with Saoirse Ronan. I think she's so brilliant and I would just love to watch her work. Same with Florence Pugh — basically I'm now just gonna list all of the Little Women cast. Jennifer Coolidge. If she’s ever around, I'd love to work with her…I think they should just let me make a movie where I just get to hang out with everyone. Basically I want a movie of different interactions with fun people.
Suncoast drops on Hulu February 9. Check out the rest of our Most-Anticipated Winter Movies For 2024!
Lead image via Searchlight Pictures.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
