Beneath some remarkable performances and extremely good individual moments, Scarborough is cruel misery porn.

It’s a movie that relishes in heartbreak and sadness for the sake of doing so. It wants an instant, guttural reaction from its audience and it knows exactly how to do it. It’s like Bambi if it was twice the length, and all the extra time was spent waterboarding Bambi and his forest friends. 

Very few events have a lasting impact, nor does it reach any sort of conclusive idea. It’s a mosaic which reveals nothing. Things happen that make us feel, then are forgotten for the next thing that makes us feel again. Even then, the connective tissue is extremely weak, so instead of a series of loose vignettes, it’s just inconsequential stories piled on top of each other for 130 minutes.

And dear lord is this movie cruel. It relishes in destroying its characters. It has many sweet moments, but monologues aren’t going to save the day. They exist to be tortured for our emotional “entertainment”. The film continues to beat the characters down almost independently from the story, just in a completely objective fundamental way. It disguises itself in real world issues but at the end of the day it’s no better than a movie reliant on jumpscares. Give me a quick rush of emotion by cheating and pulling the rug under the viewer.

It’s standard indie drivel that wants us to feel sad and nostalgic and sweet, and all it cares is to do just that on a surface level. Nothing to think about beyond that, just watch it and feel these horrible feelings then forget it and go to the next intense emotion. By the end the experience has come and gone with hardly any real mark, like if a tornado ravaged a town but only managed to rustle a few leaves.

In a landscape with movies like Moonlight and the Florida Project, Scarborough stands no chance. It’s festival fare, wrapping itself in politics and themes that it abuses to make us feel sad. It disrespects the audience, it disrespects the characters, and it definitely disrespects the real life marginalized stories that desperately need proper representation. Gross film, but with some unreal child acting.

Beneath some remarkable performances and extremely good individual moments, Scarborough is cruel misery porn.

It’s a movie that relishes in heartbreak and sadness for the sake of doing so. It wants an instant, guttural reaction from its audience and it knows exactly how to do it. It’s like Bambi if it was twice the length, and all the extra time was spent waterboarding Bambi and his forest friends. 

Very few events have a lasting impact, nor does it reach any sort of conclusive idea. It’s a mosaic which reveals nothing. Things happen that make us feel, then are forgotten for the next thing that makes us feel again. Even then, the connective tissue is extremely weak, so instead of a series of loose vignettes, it’s just inconsequential stories piled on top of each other for 130 minutes.

And dear lord is this movie cruel. It relishes in destroying its characters. It has many sweet moments, but monologues aren’t going to save the day. They exist to be tortured for our emotional “entertainment”. The film continues to beat the characters down almost independently from the story, just in a completely objective fundamental way. It disguises itself in real world issues but at the end of the day it’s no better than a movie reliant on jumpscares. Give me a quick rush of emotion by cheating and pulling the rug under the viewer.

It’s standard indie drivel that wants us to feel sad and nostalgic and sweet, and all it cares is to do just that on a surface level. Nothing to think about beyond that, just watch it and feel these horrible feelings then forget it and go to the next intense emotion. By the end the experience has come and gone with hardly any real mark, like if a tornado ravaged a town but only managed to rustle a few leaves.

In a landscape with movies like Moonlight and the Florida Project, Scarborough stands no chance. It’s festival fare, wrapping itself in politics and themes that it abuses to make us feel sad. It disrespects the audience, it disrespects the characters, and it definitely disrespects the real life marginalized stories that desperately need proper representation. Gross film, but with some unreal child acting.