NEW YEAR: Redefining New Year, New You

The tradition of New Year’s resolutions. The hope we see for the upcoming year condensed into small promises we make to ourselves for self-improvement and further life advancement. It’s a tradition welcomed willingly each New Year, an “out with the old, in with the new” feeling engulfing us all. Yet, how does one move forward without facing the past, especially if it is a shared one. Nathan Sutton’s New Year is a deep look into the idea of clearing the air in order to move forward, the start of a new year the catalyst to release.

What Sutton and his cast are able to create, with the solid foundation of his and Elisha Skorman’s script, is a slow burner that maintains a constant awareness of the growing situation heating up. There are forces at play that have avoided acknowledgment for years between these supposed friends and lovers that not only threaten to break the surface but also reveal inner truths and struggles. While it loses some of its pacing along the way, New Year maintains your attention, audiences holding their breath as they watch how the truth can hurt, but can also be liberating in a time of renewal.

Setting the Stage

There is a classic feeling to New Year as it opens, mirroring the idea of old age that carries throughout the film, the black and white filming, and the trumpet heavy score calling back to classics. There is a jazzy film that resonates, calling the mind to the past, yet making it effervescently present in the now. As the blurred image behind the opening credits comes into focus, there is an understanding of the direction New Year is about to take. Where conversations encompassing the group’s tension may start light, the true focus of their anger, confusion, and resentment is almost certainly going to come into focus.

New Year does struggle though in the beginning to retain and engage the audience, its stage play feeling heightening the medium, but its score disconnecting. From the moment Ben (Timothy V. Murphy) and Kat (Elisha Skorman), as well as Micah (T.K. Weaver), appears on screen, the score almost drowns out the dialogue. And it’s unfortunate because this is when the audience strives to connect with the characters and the stories. Thankfully, this is an element that stifles the film only in its earlier moments, silence, and later on fitting soundtrack giving the actors the space to fill with their tension and emotional strife.

As an audience, we are quick to learn it is New Year’s Eve, Kat, Micha, and Ben preparing to move to the east coast in two days’ time. In the spirit of the holiday, and in light of their departure, they are throwing their last hurrah with long-time friends. First to arrive is Julian (Kyle Mac), whose immediate attraction to Kat speaks to an undertone that is flirted with, but never fully embraced or addressed. His early arrival seems to hone in a tension within the home, that subtly seemed to already exist between Kat and Ben. Next to arrive is Cameron (Neil Jackson) and girlfriend Meegan (Raven Scott). While their initial arrival brings euphoria and welcomed warmth, it quickly seems to turn cold as Cameron, Micah’s father, and Ben find their ideas of how to raise the boy differ drastically.

As the night progresses, more guests arrive in the form of Joseph (Nelson Lee) and his agent Willa (Gillian Shure), who not only temporarily break the tension, but also add their own elements of contention and turmoil as the night progresses. As the hands draw closer to midnight, so too do the truths the group has tried so desperately to avoid.

It’s All About the Tension

This is a film about tension and its many forms. As the night progresses, the group finds several moments to break from one another, each pairing off. With each pairing, viewers are enlightened to the tensions that not only encompass the group, but each character as an individual. With each reveal, each new information that comes to light, you can feel the heat turning up, inching closer to a presumed explosion. It was the effectiveness of the inclusion of the personal struggle that truly elevated the film. The tension comes not only from their interactions but from their own personal struggles and past unresolved issues.

There is a scene early on as guests are arriving when Micah is asked to showcase the earthquake project he had designed for school. As he delivers his presentation, discussing the fault lines and the build-up of tension and pressure, he crashes the building together, a figure dropping from the building and falling to the table, along with a car smashed from the damage. But it is not only in the boy’s display that hits hard visually. There is a metaphorical clairvoyance during their conversation of earthquakes that follows the presentation, a parallelism that rings true as the night continues on.

There is a discussion of the aftermath of earthquakes, both good and bad. Where an earthquake could correct overpopulation and present an opportunity to fix the infrastructure during repairs, there is also the negative that is disputed. It is a baseline for the different perspectives amongst the table, but also a look into the ambition and willingness of sacrifice to achieve something more. It’s a vital moment that cements the characters as to who they are, what decisions they will make, and their outlook at others and the world around them, elements that speak to the authenticity of their decisions later on in the film.

Conclusion: New Year

New Year forces its characters to face their past, both the things said and unsaid, forcing their true feelings to the surface before the clock strikes midnight. It is as cathartic as it is horrid, feeling the tension as it rises, unable to break free much like the characters on screen. And this is a film that truly relies on the strength of its cast. There is not a standout, each working with and off one another to deliver the perfect exhibition of tension and truth in artistic form.

New Year is an exemplary artistic showcase of the power of dialogue and performance, wrapped in a tightly constructed celluloid of truth.

Have you seen New Year? What did you think? Let us know in the comments below!

New Year will be released in select theaters on December 15, 2021. 

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