Waves · reception & legacy

2019 · Trey Edward Shults

How Waves has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

It premiered at Telluride 2019 to real awards buzz — then got completely shut out on Oscar nomination morning, one of that year's most-cited snubs. Since then it's settled in as a young-cinephile favourite, the Letterboxd-era 'this movie destroyed me' pick, even as the debates around it never fully cooled.

What's debated

The fault line is whether it's a transcendent piece of empathy filmmaking or a white director aestheticising a Black family's trauma in maximum A24 style — with a side skirmish over which of its two halves is the better film.

Its footprint

It's practically shorthand for the late-2010s A24 look: neon-soaked, needle-drop-driven, scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, with Frank Ocean carrying the emotional heavy lifting. It's also the film that launched Taylor Russell.

Where it stands

A canon-climber among younger viewers — a fixture of 'films that emotionally wrecked me' lists — rather than a critics' consensus classic.

★ Did you know? Trey Edward Shults wrote specific songs directly into the script — the wall-to-wall soundtrack (Frank Ocean, Kanye West, Radiohead, Animal Collective) was baked in from the writing stage, not added in post, and Shults has said clearing Frank Ocean's music was essential to the film.

Named by the director

Influences Trey Edward Shults has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

Terrence Malick — Shults apprenticed on Malick's crews and has repeatedly cited him as the formative influence behind his floating, subjective camera style.
Wong Kar-wai — Shults named Wong Kar-wai in Waves press as an influence on the film's saturated color and romantic visual mood.