“Life isn’t clean, life is messy. Particularly during adolescence,” says Kevin Phillips, the director of this year’s bleakest coming-of-age film, Super Dark Times. It’s Kevin’s first film, although he has explored adolescence in short films like Too Cool for School, a thriller about a teenager who skips school only to have a sobering nightmare of a day. “Our teenage years are a volatile time,” Kevin reiterates.
In the genre-crossing indie film, set in the pre-Columbine early 90s, Phillips takes the melodrama of youth and cranks it up to 100 — tracking three boys’ slow descent into darkness after they accidentally kill their friend during a play fight. The boys make a panicked decision to cover up their manslaughter, naively believing they can move on with their lives and pretend the episode never happened. They quickly learn tragedies aren’t that simple. The boys cope in different ways: Zach (the gawky, endearing one) works hard to keep the peace, and secrets, between the friends, while Josh walks a tightrope between sanity and madness — eventually losing the battle. Bad things happening is often the strongest catalyst for growing up, Super Dark Times seems to argue. The cast of rising young — including up-and-comers Owen Campbell and Charlie Tahan — play characters who have no choice but to shed their innocence and grapple with the cruelty of the world.
Kevin talks to i-D about how he and his college friends came up a disturbing take on coming-of-age journey.
How did this film come together?
Through the writers Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski. They’re childhood friends who grew up in Athens, Georgia and Ben and I actually attended the same school. During college, it was always our intention to keep collaborating in the future and eventually make a feature film together. We created this idea of these teenagers just kind of messing around with a samurai sword in a field and one of them accidentally dies. The idea from there kind of spawned into this idea of the friendships that remained and how this one tragedy kind of creates a rift between the friends. The themes that ended up coming into being were toxic masculinity and the fragility of youth.
The film is set in the 90s, right before the Columbine shooting. What was the reasoning behind that decision?
Most of the film’s makers were children of the 90s and we always strived to make a very authentic movie. We thought in a sort of responsible way that we should mine our lives. That period, right before Columbine, was a time when suburbia was still seen as a safe haven. Where kids could get on bikes and stay out till night. When kids were allowed to roam free without a fear of anything happening…
The film borrows from different genres — psychological thriller, horror, teen movies. Were there any particular works you looked at?
There was a Japanese film called Eureka, directed by Shinji Aoyama, that was extremely influential. It also deals with tragedy and PTSD and its characters move on from that.
What horror films do you admire?
I don’t really do well with horror! I’m kept up for hours. Maybe that’s why I’m able to approach the horrific elements in this movie with some success, because I’m just very sensitive to it.
Super Dark Times is now in select theaters and available for purchase on iTunes .