Griffin in Summer
Griffin in Summer
7.294%
Fourteen-year-old Griffin Nafly is the most ambitious playwright of his generation. But once he meets handsome twenty-five-year-old handyman Brad, his life (and play) will never be the same.
Kevin Ward reviewedJuly 1, 2025
Griffin in Summer is a sly, discomforting character study disguised as a coming-of-age indie. The eponymous Griffin (a pitch-perfect Everett Blunck) is a theater-obsessed 14-year-old whose self-seriousness alienates his peers as he believes his overwrought plays are emotionally sophisticated. At home, his mother (Melanie Lynskey) is stretched thin, and when she hires Brad (Owen Teague), a 25y/o jaded New York artist-slash-poolboy, to do odd jobs around the house, what starts as a mild fixation over the Summer, sharpens into a full-blown, adolescent infatuation.
Writer-director Nicholas Colia draws this spiral with queasy precision, mining Griffin’s tunnel vision for both pathos and awkward laughs. Kathryn Newton delivers a scene-stealing turn as Brad’s clingy high school girlfriend, a hilarious and cringe-inducing foil to Griffin’s fantasies. The film hinges on whether you view Griffin as a tragic romantic or a budding narcissist—Blunck somehow threads the needle between both.