Low Tide
by Karen Pecota

Filmmaker Kevin McMullin writes and directs a storyline with an interesting take on teenage summer mischief. Unpredictable plot twists have the audience glued to their seats. It's intense, and while I was dreading screening this film in the late evening, I was wide-awake until the credit roll. McMullin was present for the Q & A after the film, which was impressive that he was hanging around at such a late hour. Listening to his perspective on the theme was enlightening and food for thought about observing the teenage culture of privilege vs. the other-side-of-the-tracks.

Synopsis:

Treasure Hunting has always had its attraction over generations and decades in our world. The same is the case for a group of misfit high schoolers who live in a touristy beach town. Their enjoyment during the long summer days is playing a persona, like that of a modern-day Robin Hood....steal from the rich and give to the poor. The poor meaning themselves. They also enjoy giving the teens from the big city a hard time when they strut their wealth by the clothes they wear and the cars they drive. A rivalry between beach and city teens.

The main past-time of the local high schooler gang, Alan (Keenan Johnson), his friend Red (Alex Neustaedter), Smitty (Daniel Zolghadri) and Alan's younger brother Peter (Jaeden Martell), is to break into vacation homes to steal to support their boyhood summer fun (funding dates on the boardwalk, eating at the burger stand or whatever). The real fun begins when Alan wants to impress one of the city girls. He secretly wants out of the local stealing gig, which he knows is a wrong activity. Peter finds a bag of rare gold coins on his one and only heist. In order to keep Red away from the treasured coins because of his mean, jealous, violent and unpredictably aggressive nature, Alan and Peter hide the treasure and make a map only the two brothers know about, or…?