American Cherry (2023)
Directed by Marcella Cytrynowicz
Written by Marcella Cytrynowicz
Starring Leonora Varela, Matty Cardarople, Hart Denton
Release Date March 17th, 2023
Published March 16th, 2023
Is this dull or am I just tired? Probably should not have to wonder about that during a movie. But I did wonder that as I sat through the frankly miserable new teen drama, American Cherry. The film starring Hart Denton and Sara May Sommers as a doomed young couple is an incredibly sad bit of small-town misery porn about incredibly sad teens and negligent small down adults. American Cherry presses buttons hard, doubling down on portraying how dull to the point of agony small town life is and the lengths one troubled teen specifically will go just to break the monotony.
Hart Denton, from TV's Riverdale, stars in American Cherry as Finn Elliott, a deeply depressed young man. Finn is so bored in his small corner of the Midwest that he is pondering suicide. In fact, the plot of the movie kicks in when Finn, with his constant companion, an old school video camera, is lying in the street hoping one of the few cars that pass his house, runs him over. Finn is rescued at the last moment by one of his High School classmates, Eliza (Sarah May Sommers), who manages to stop an oncoming car just in time.
Intrigued that someone may not want to see him splattered all over the road, Finn begins to see more of Eliza and the two form a tentative romance. That burgeoning romance is tempered by Eliza's own personal drama involving her mother, Louise (Leonor Varela), a struggling alcoholic. Louise and Eliza are estranged not only from Eliza's completely absent bio-dad, but also from her step-dad and step-sister, though Eliza still sees the sister everyday. The separation of their parents have led to Eliza resenting her sister while lamenting her mother's decisions.
This is all portrayed against a beautifully bucolic setting. The lovely backdrops of a beautiful small town provide a counterpoint to the ugly personal stories that drive the plot of American Cherry. That's a solid approach, juxtaposition is a classic dramatic tool. What doesn't work for me about American Cherry is how the film leans in on being so ugly. Instead of merely being disaffected and sad, Finn is a psychopath. This is a deeply unwell character and the broad, brooding, weirdness of Finn is not a great fit for the drama of Eliza's story which is honestly more compelling in the conflicts it presents.
At times, Finn's deeply troubled mutterings and obnoxious use of Kurt Vonnegut quotes as a signifier of his superiority over others, make the character appear as if he's visiting the wrong movie. He's the star of the film so, obviously, that's a problem. Sarah May Sommers is delivering a lovely performance filled with the heartbreaking angst of being a teenage girl desperate for a normal life, while Denton is playing a loose adaptation of John Hinckley or Mark David Chapman, loner-killers with delusions of self-importance.
Find my full length review at Geeks.Media
