I went to IMDb to see what other people had said about this film, and the very first review I saw had the title of "Boring.""Beach Rats" is quiet and thoughtful, and it demands a certain amount of patience, but it breaks my heart that someone would dismiss it as boring. It follows a lost youth navigating the no man's land between teenager and adult as he tries to figure out how to be the person he wants to be -- whoever that is -- in an environment that tells him who he should be. He hangs out with a bunch of losers who speak in a kind of dumb bro language and couldn't string together an articulate thought between the three of them while wandering aimlessly around Coney Island and its environs looking to score easy drugs. Meanwhile, he carries on a secret life of gay encounters with older men while at the same time trying to force himself to enjoy a relationship with a young woman who's too mature for him.Is he gay? Probably. Does he specifically seek out older men as father figures because his own dad just recently died of lingering cancer? Maybe. But the point is that he doesn't have the tools required to process any of the things he's feeling because he lives in a stunted place surrounded by stunted people, and it's easier to escape into feeling good the bad way than to put work into feeling better the hard way.More than anything "Beach Rats" is about how hard it is for men to explore their own feelings in a culture that has rigidly defined what it means to be masculine. Grade: A

The movie quite accurately depicts what closeted boys do and go through.. Acceptability in society is kept above self and for good. Fear of rejection by friends is quite what the character depicts and chooses not to accept himself as he is. Even when in company of a gay man, fears what might happen if he accepts the truth.The ending however is a bit abrupt. Great concept but not so good execution..

This was the most pretentious movie that I have ever seen in my entire life! The protagonist is a young man who has no job, no education that we know of, is fighting against his sexual desires to be with other men, and has a group of friends that seemingly only like him due to his drug supply. As he has sexual experiences with other men, the audience suspects that he may embrace a gay sexual identity. However, he states that he doesn't identify himself as gay, and when he is with his friends, he portrays the gay video chat site as a way that he scores weed. After he and his thug friends rob Jeremy on the beach, I was hoping that they'd all end up in prison, or at the very least, the mother would throw Frankie out on the street. Throughout the film, we didn't learn anything about Frankie, his friends, his ill father, his mother, or his sister. This film starts out like Frankie is going to go on a journey to learn about himself, yet in the end, his life is just like the fireworks; it's the same thing all the time. After watching this film, I almost feel like the filmmakers were using Frankie's ambiguous sexuality as a mere ploy to garner attention and make their film appear to be much deeper and cutting edge than it actually is. All in all, I find it incredibly insulting and offensive to the entire LGBTQ community that this drivel won 7 awards!

Most reviewers seem to give this film lots of stars, or nearly none. I'm going to break from the herd and give it 5 out of 10. I'm awarding 2 stars for Harris Dickinson's body, and 3 more for attempting to tell a story that hasn't been given its due. The film industry (both US and foreign) would have you believe that a gay man discovers his sexuality by meeting someone special and spending quality time with him, whether herding sheep on a mountain or playing volleyball at an Italian villa. In truth, even in this day and age the vast majority of gay men go through an often desperate and anguished journey of discovery and self-acceptance alone, with no one to lend a hand aside from the occasional hookup. It's a story that should be told. Sadly, this film does a pretty awful job of telling it.It's hard to imagine at what point writer/director Eliza Hittman, a straight female, thought she understood the struggle of young gay men well enough to invest herself in making this film. Moreover, I can't figure out what audience it was intended for - the gay men who'd quickly spot its obvious flaws, or the straight people who'd have no interest in a story that revolves around gay sex with random strangers.It's painful to sit and watch Frankie make one bad decision after the next for an entire film, and just as painful that he never really suffers as a result. The things he does to ingratiate himself to his worthless friends are maddening - he steals his dying father's pain medication so they can get high, steals his mother's earrings to buy them tickets to a party, sets up the film's lone arguably nice guy to be beaten and robbed, all with no negative personal consequences. Meanwhile, these three guys he's so eager to please seem to bring absolutely nothing to the table. It's a complete mystery why he wants to hang out with them at all. And an even bigger mystery why he'd risk exposing his secret life to these troglodytes just to supply them with weed.The central premise of having Frankie meet men for hookups in an online video chat room specific to the Brooklyn area shows a laughable unfamiliarity with the way these things work. Video chat rooms are for guys to jerk off together on camera, not for guys to arrange meetups. If such localized video chat rooms ever existed they're long gone in this age of Grindr and similar cell phone apps, but I guess a laptop screen is more cinematic than a smartphone. The way Frankie's more seasoned hookup Jeremy reacts to his inexperience and self-repression also reveals a genuine ignorance of the way a gay man would handle that situation ("It's okay, I like a challenge" - seriously??).It's perhaps most telling of all that every single male character in the film is sleazy, and almost all of the gay men are physically repulsive. Jeremy comes off in the best light, but he tries to lure Frankie with pot and admittedly uses the hookup site "a lot". The sole arguably positive gay role models are a couple Frankie spots holding hands on the subway - but the hands are all we see; the camera doesn't even show us their faces. Meanwhile, the three female characters (Frankie's mother, sister, and girlfriend) are all ostensibly good people with no significant flaws.I don't know if this film was meant for a gay audience, but it definitely should not have been made by someone who doesn't know what it's like to be gay.