10.16.2010.29.20
S#!%HOUSE
by Cooper Raiff
10.16.2010.29.20
by Cooper Raiff
Lonely college freshman Alex attends a party at legendary fraternity "Shithouse" and forges a strong bond with a girl he meets there. When she ignores him the next day, Alex pulls out all the stops in hopes of rekindling that small moment of connection.
Lonely college freshman Alex (writer/director Cooper Raiff) has closed himself off from his peers, who all appear to have this whole "college thing" figured out. But everything changes one night when Alex takes a leap and attends a party at Shithouse -- a legendary party fraternity -- where he forges a strong connection with Maggie (Dylan Gelula, FIRST GIRL I LOVED). The next day, she ignores him completely and seems to have forgotten about their amazing night. Desperately clinging to his social breakthrough, Alex pulls out all the stops with one more night at Shithouse, hoping to rekindle that moment of connection. From producer Jay Duplass, this Grand Jury Prize Winner at the 2020 SXSW Film Festival announces a hilarious and winning new star of American independent film.
Cooper Raiff, Dylan Gelula, Amy Landecker, Logan Miller, Olivia Welch, Abby Quinn, Alina Patra, Ashley Padilla, Joy Sunday, Tre Hall
Cooper Raiff
1 hour, 42 minutes
October 16, 2020
IFC Films
United States
Closed Captioning Available
Descriptive Audio Devices Available
Assisted Listening Devices Available
Oct 16 through Oct 29
The whole movie is suspended in a pleasant and intimate space between order and chaos, love and abandonment, leaving the nest and building a new one. Every time SHITHOUSE borrows from something else, it only seems to become more itself.
Raiff is so credible in the part one can't help but suspect there's a lot of him in Alex; the film's willingness to look so frankly at his vulnerability, in an unmanipulative way, feels especially refreshing now. The picture doesn't understand Maggie as well as it does Alex; but it allows Gelula to deliver a more complex variety of defensiveness than she did in her angry-teen role on Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt. Like Alex, the film may just need to be patient with the possibility that she doesn't fully understand her behavior herself.
This story of a homesick college freshman, played affectingly by Raiff himself, doesn't break any new ground - it doesn't even try - but his film is still an appealing charmer.
Tickets are available for purchase online.
Buy Tickets