Short Term 12
Movies like “Short Term 12” come with a lot of hype if you don’t see them immediately, to the point where you hope your initial feelings aren’t clouded by it. But Destin Daniel Cretton’s terrific film rewards your attention, not just for its lived feeling and strong performances, but the real way it looks at youth on the edges of society, who find a community within themselves where they feel welcome. That’s true not just for the troubled kids who stay at Short Term 12, the group home in the film, but the young adults who run it.
The main focus of the film is on Grace, played by Brie Larson is the first in a trio of terrific performances she’s given this decade. Grace is one of the supervisors of the home, and she’s comfortable enough with the kids there that a routine escape attempt by Sammy or a breakdown is handled with the sympathetic ear of a friend. She is in a “secret” relationship with Mason, another supervisor at the home played by John Gallagher Jr., and we get to know them enough to see why they have such an easy rapport with the teens- they have their own baggage. In the course of a week, one of their longer-tenured kids (Marcus, played by “Sorry to Bother You’s” LaKeith Stanfield) will struggle as he ages out, a new girl (Jayden, played by Kaitlyn Dever) will have Grace on high alert, and a new supervisor (Nate, played by Rami Malek) will be in for a tough first week.
Cretton is writing and directing from a place of experience with this film, and that’s important to how well “Short Term 12” works in the end. A lesser director could have turned this into a farce- or worse, “Kids”- but Cretton wanted to illuminate the struggles of youth without making a film that exploited them. He succeeds beautifully, and gets great work out of all of his actors, whether they are ones that would become big like Larson, Stanfield and Malek or someone who shines more in the moment like Dever or Alex Calloway as Sammy, who always “tries” to escape, but seems more like he wants to push himself than leave a place he is cared for. This is a film about a family formed by the people in it, people who cannot necessarily rely on their own families to help them. Mason has a good foster family, but Grace’s past is broken, and when Jayden comes to stay at the home- coupled with an unexpected pregnancy- she has to deal with that past in a way that could break her down significantly. Larson is fantastic in this role, and seeing how she built off of it with “Room,” and even “Captain Marvel,” shows her as one of the most engaging actresses working now. Her, Cretton and the rest of the cast have something moving and entertaining in this film. It’s worth catching up on, if you haven’t already.
