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DIRECTED BY: Emil Nava

FEATURING: Daniel Zolghadri, Kristine Froseth, Tim Johnson Jr.

PLOT: Teenagers Michael and Jameson start a relationship while delving deeper and deeper into the trippy landscapes concocted in their minds by a trendy psychedelic inhalant.

COMMENTS: Disaffected teens have been fertile ground for cinematic drama for decades. Going back to Rebel Without a Cause, and probably well before, young people have sought out entertainment that gets them, and the movies have responded with tales of kids whom the squares refuse to get. Snorkeling is a proud inheritor of that tradition, and seems especially in tune with a moment where teenagers are too beaten down to rebel; they just want to escape.

Snorkeling finds America’s youth in an especially despondent mood, and it’s hard to blame them. We only catch glimpses of adults, but the world they’ve created for their kids is a selfish one; they’re dedicated to satisfying themselves, leaving nothing behind for the next generation. We hear from several teenagers in quasi-documentary segments where they explain their rootlessness and highlight the relief that snorkeling brings. Our guides through this defeated landscape are Michael, a half-Iranian pothead who affably goes through his days just trying to put it all behind him, and Jameson, an effervescent young woman with a home life she is so over. (One suspects that her father named her after a bottle of his favorite spirit.) She introduces Michael to a new kind of high, and they embark upon a curious push-pull relationship where he always tries to get closer, and she’s always anxious to get away.

Looking inside their drugged-out world doesn’t tell us much about its appeal. Scenes take on a pink hue, featureless bodies writhe in the sky, and everyone seems to be caught up in a blissed-out, laid-back hippie vibe. Every now and then, the disconnect is so intense that characters literally become animated, swirling around in a hand-drawn fantasia for a few seconds of true escape from the real world. (These are the moments that take the most advantage of Nava’s background as a go-to music video director for stars like Ed Sheeran, Calvin Harris, and Eminem.) We have to take it on faith that this is as satisfying as the characters tell us it is. But while these peeks inside the hallucinations are mildly interesting, the truly shocking images are what these cosmic travelers look like back in our world. They’re half-comatose bodies, staring blankly into the sky with oxygen masks strapped to their faces, as if some titan had picked up a hospital and shaken all the patients out onto the ground. We’re trading one empty room for another.

The big paradox at the heart of Snorkeling is that Michael and Jameson—and presumably all their contemporaries—desperately seek connection, but their solution is to engage in the most isolating activity imaginable. That’s the driving force behind the awkward finale, which feels like adults showed up at the very end and shoehorned in a climax from an ABC Afterschool Special. It’s a relief to see them recognizing the trap they’ve escaped, but it feels stagey in a way that the earlier surreal naturalism did not. Snorkeling has some interesting ideas about the reasons the kids are not alright these days and is very sympathetic about why they’re downright anxious to get away from it all. But the only way out it can think of is to harsh everyone’s mellow. That’s disappointing, but for a little while, it’s a nice mild buzz.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…perfectly captures the disaffected mood of a generation through its stunning, hallucinatory visuals and immersive soundscape, creating a potent atmosphere of beautiful despair. However, this stylistic triumph comes at the cost of story and soul. The characters are hollow vessels, and the film’s sanitized portrayal of addiction feels like a profound failure of nerve.” – Naser Nahandian, Gazettely (contemporaneous)