Short Term 12 is a precious little movie, weighing in at just over 90 minutes. Even so, writer/Director Destin Cretton provides space for his story to evolve, without preaching or pinpointing.
Short Term 12 is a unit within a California foster care system for older youths “between ports”, who are meant to stay for a year or less in this group home setting. Twenty somethings Grace (Brie Larson) and Mason (John Gallagher, Jr) oversee the kids with a mixture of tough love and memories of their own adolescence. Lovers as well as co-workers, Grace’s newly discovered pregnancy highlights the risks always present when any new life enters the world.
The rules and operating procedures of the home are vividly illustrated in the very first scene, featuring Mason indoctrinating a new worker through a scatologically florid story of one scary runaway. Immediately after the deserved laughs, Sammy, an involuted, scrawny redhead, comes flying out the door. We’ve learned he must be caught before he leaves the “gate”, as the proctors can’t touch him once he’s off the grounds.
We also meet Marcus (Lakeith Lee Stanfield), two weeks shy of his 18th birthday, when he must leave the system and fly solo. A slender, quiet black youth with some serious chops as a rap artist, he has defied the 12 month rule, residing at ST 12 for 3 years. We worry, of course, that he has nowhere else to go, no one to love him except for the small betta fish he daintily feeds every day.
New to the home is Jayden, played with perfect young teen anger by Kaitlyn Dever (Loretta McCreedy from TV’s Justified). Jayden’s mom is gone, but her dad will have her on weekends, so she feels free to be a non-participant in group activities. But once she and Grace recognize their symmetrical pasts, both of their lives begin a spiral towards the gripping climax.
Cretton has worked on this movie for years. Before becoming a filmmaker, he worked in a similar setting for a couple of years. He gets the rhythm and rules of the life just right, letting the fleeting signs of kids with no families brush by us, never bludgeoning us with facts, just the emotions which ensue. The film started life as a short in 2008, and emerged on the festival circuit in early 2013, getting high honors at SXSW.
While clearly a low-budget operation, Cretton manages the language of cinema adroitly. He stages chase scenes on foot (even walking at times) or bicycle. Explosions and violence consist of bowls or lamps breaking. Blood trickling from a cutter’s thumb is every bit as gory as a disemboweled zombie. Baseball bats in the hands of Marcus and Grace (two separate incidents) evoke just as much fear as a casually waved handgun.
The kids and the young adults who manage them are never seen as caricatures. Each is caught while living a full life, not simply punched in as a piece of story telling. This director deserves to be given the next step up, to share his insights and skills with a larger audience. We all might learn something.
4.5/5 stars