Ah the college experience. What many a freshmen are waiting for. Parties. Booze. Hook ups. That’s at least what the movies teach us we should be waiting for. For kids like Alex (Cooper Raiff), maybe they’re looking for something different: something more, with their college experience. But if you have to start somewhere, might as we be at the Shithouse.
Alex has sort of been coasting through his first year of college, happy to witness people like his roommate Sam (Logan Miller) play the college game of drunken, drug filled euphoria. One day, he realizes he’s gotta give party culture the good old college try (yes!, and it fits!). That first party is at Shithouse, a local frat, where he strikes up a conversation with Maggie (Dylan Gelula), his RA: a conversation he hasn’t had at college yet. After parting ways with Maggie and drunkenly putting Sam to bed, a wide awake Alex sees Maggie, also awake and bored, and rekindles that conversation they started earlier.
For a movie called Shithouse produced, written, and directed by a novice, this movie is delightfully polished. All props to Cooper Raiff for that. There’s so many things about college that can be exciting. Most people gravitate to the parties and freedom for obvious reasons. I enjoyed them too! But some of the nights I most enjoyed were those late night deep conversations where you forge connections with other people. Those ones that start out innocuous until those special feelings happen. Raiff and Gelula are excellent at conveying that special connection, using random conversations about a turtle and take the Gen Z version of a Before Sunrise walk and talk, opening up about their feelings and showing one another who they are. What starts as something awkward starts flowing easier and easier as the night goes on, leaving both of them in a dizzy at the end of the night.
Then Raiff hits us with the hammer: the morning after, when all those guarded feelings return for one of the leads, but not the other. What follows is a social media blitz and whirl of confusion for both Maggie and Alex. A game of will they won’t they ensues, but it seems like both sides aren’t equally invested, meaning that Alex and Maggie have to go deeper emotionally. Both of them have baggage from their pasts their struggling with that we learn about over the course of the night. And they both realize the only way to really find the joys of the college experience or connections with others is by confronting those feelings and letting go. Will they end up together or not? Ultimately, Raiff subtly sidesteps the question, and turns the movie at the halfway point to the real thesis for his movie: giving something a good old college try, to see if it’s really for you or not. Then, and only then, can you truly know yourself, and find those real connections you’re searching for.
One of my friends made an astute point about Shithouse. This movie is about the person having a drink by themselves in the background of a college movie that we overlook for the showy lead. So shouts to the wallflowers out there! I’d love to grab a beer or cocktail with you, and talk about whatever. Let’s get weird!