During the summer of 1991 in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Daniel follows a bad friend who leads him to do bad things and take drugs. But this may not last long when Daniel finds a girl he loves and starts to chase her.
Visually atmospheric but tonally all over the place, Hot Summer Nights, a first feature by Elijah Bynum, has much to appreciate but ultimately possesses the sampler-platter vibe of a director's demo reel.
[Elijah Bynum] solicits strong performances from his young cast - especially Timothée Chalamet as the teenage fish out of water - and blends humor and increasingly dark sensibility to good effect.
Like a teen New England Goodfellas. That's not to discredit Bynum's own style. He wouldn't earn the Goodfellas comparison unless the style was self-assured and expressing character, and it is.
Elijah Bynum's directorial debut, Hot Summer Nights, is a brazen anti-coming-of-age thriller that oozes with all the right confidence, chutzpah, and passion.
Hot Summer Nights is a sneaky slice of dark Americana, a gorgeously shot, hard truth coming-of-age tale rendered through a lens of innocence and grandeur, a sexy 20th century fairy tale.
Bynum swerves this story into gangster territory without an exit strategy. It's as if he felt the movie was always one ingredient shy of having a distinct taste of its own, and kept adding things to the mix until he ran out of time.
