A REVIEW OF THE FILM GRIFFIN IN SUMMER (2024)

Griffin in Summer is a 2024 American coming-of-age comedy-drama. It is written and directed by Nicholas Colia in his directorial debut, and stars Everett Blunck and Owen Teague. The film runs 90 min.

The Borwood Strangler
by Sam Hall, 20 Nov 2025

Griffin in Summer has a fine pedigree. Ever since Jane Austen penned the original rom-com, Pride and Prejudice, head-strong protagonists falling in love with the wrong man have proven a staple of popular entertainment. With Everett Blunck giving a superb performance as a 14-year-old boy falling in love with the wrong man, Griffin should have been, could have been, a sparkling new and original addition. The fact that it falls short is—after Blunck's star turn is given the unstinting praise it deserves—the film's primary and rather dreary point of interest.

The set up is solid and brimming with promise. Griffin Nafly is a budding playwright, an emerging artist growing up in a humdrum suburb with the none too subtle name of Borwood. He's a high-strung, demanding boy who's only interest is his next theatrical production, Regrets of Autumn. But Griffin's cast, his friendship group, are showing disturbing signs of developing new teenage interests: primarily sex and romance. Griffin's dismissive impatience with this love folderol is of course the set up for his fall. A hunky 25-year-old handyman arrives to work in his home, and Griffin's startled heart shoots him straight from Autumnal regrets to Springtime yearnings.

The light-hearted laughs and drama can almost write themselves from here—except they don't. Instead, the film seems to fall prey to the well-named suburban curse. The boring deadwood—Borwood—was supposed to be satirised, touched-up and transcended, but, due to some frankly awful directorial decisions, we see the Borwood vibe get a death-grip on the entire production.

The opening scene provides the grain of sand which reflects, irritates, and ultimately kills off the frothy fun that should have been this film's world. During a student talent show, Griffin takes to the stage for a solo performance of a dramatic scene from Regrets of Autumn. He plays both roles in a Days of Wine and Roses-inspired marital hell-fight. And it may well be the film’s highlight. I’ve watched the scene in isolation many times and have never come close to keeping a straight face. It’s hilarious. Ask our seasoned comic actors to perform this scene and I guarantee Blunck won’t be bested.

Maybe Blunck was too good. Because the response from the schoolkid audience—one of complete zombie silence—just doesn’t ring true. Sure, Borwood high-schools are ruthless enforcers of the lowest-common-denominator, but they know funny shit when they see it. They might not have understood what the hell this weird kid was doing, but they would have laughed up a storm. Anyone who has attended a high school theatrical production knows the strangely different sensibility which temporarily grips this Darwinian mob. The power of art, even amongst the rudest, exerts itself.

It might seem a small mistake, but it’s one which riddles the entire film. Griffin’s supporting cast—Mom and four school friends—are all cut from the same Borwood zombie cloth. Mom and Griffin’s best friend Kara are a matching pair of dreary, drab, stuttery, gawping nincompoops. The other three friends never manage to rise even this high, preferring wordless Borwood stultification instead. The aim must have been to create a comic contrast with live-wire Griffin. Instead, it seems Griffin is trapped in a padded cell, wasting his waspish zingers and condescending darts on the deadening cushion of Borwood torpor.

But even this would have been small grounds for complaint if Griffin’s love interest had...something—anything! Owen Teague plays Brad Rizzo, the dopey, hunky 25-year-old handyman who steals Griffin’s heart. It’s possible Teague is a good actor, although it does stretch credulity that the Brad we’re given onscreen was deliberate. The comedy comes from Griffin being head-over-heels in love, scheming and strategizing to snag his dreamboat, while the dopey hunk remains oblivious. But the dopey-hunk role most definitely did not call for an egregiously stupid block of painfully insensate wood. You could count on one hand the number of times Brad even manages to look in Griffin’s direction. Too busy pondering the business of taking his next breath, perhaps.

The role called for the type of dufus Keanu Reeves specialised in creating. Even with the script as is, Reeves would have given Brad human warmth, believability—and Blunck’s emotionally rich performance would have truly soared. What we got instead was a block. Every time the camera was turned on Brad, like a three-dimensional freeze-frame he stopped the natural flow of whatever scene Blunck happened to be nailing.

The reason for this aesthetic catastrophe is plain enough. The film’s 14-year-old star was pursuing a sexual relationship with a 25-year-old man. While we might, with therapist standing nervously by, allow an addled kid such a bizarre error, the man has to beyond pure in his rejection of such a notion. Even Reeves’ dopiest dufus would have responded humanly, if cluelessly, to Griffin’s winning, insistent ways. That possibility had to be excised and it was and with it went the movie’s heart.

A good example is the scene where Griffin has maneuvered Brad into joining his play. Brad decides to take over the production and wants to make wholesale changes. Griffin excitedly agrees to Brad’s suggestions. The dopey hunk’s ideas are ridiculously farcical, belonging to a totally different comedy genre, but we can live with that, because it’s Griffin’s experience that matters here. Blunck again gives a beautifully subtle performance, showing us Griffin’s confused delight and excitement at choosing to submit to a man he’s starting to love. He’s even prepared to sacrifice Regrets of Autumn for a shot at romance! We’ve seen Griffin’s dad is a dud, we’ve seen how his sexual repression is starting to hamper his social development, we’ve seen his achingly desperate need for an artistic mentor. And what he gets in reply is a stone cold block. Brad is not remotely in the room for Griffin’s entire solo performance.

Eventually the scales fall from Griffin’s eyes and he sees Brad for repellent non-human that he is. The climactic scene was darker than a film like this calls for, but, possibly to remove any doubts from the audience’s mind, it was thought wise to give Brad a bonus layer of nastiness to complement his excruciating idiocy.

A light-hearted comedy-drama like this most often resolves with the mistaken protagonist realising who their true love really is. Mr. Darcy, it turns out, was a hottie all along. Such a character is obviously off-limits for a film like this, despite the boy’s need echoing so loudly round his solo padded cell. Such a character would be required to exhibit the qualities of a Sean Nokes from Sleepers or the Grabber from The Black Phone. And that would have queered the flick even more than Borwood Brad managed.

Perhaps director Nicholas Colia can be excused for this mangled effort at storytelling; understandably, he wanted people to watch his debut feature without burning the cinema, and possibly his career, to the ground. Then again, perhaps he can be condemned according to his own principles. "Borwood," the irredeemably bourgeois suburb, was the artist’s familiar rebellious poke at his oppressive, conformist surrounds. Perhaps if Colia had lived up to his own faux-cry for artistic independence we might have had a movie worth talking about in times to come, rather than one certain to quickly disappear without trace in the dust of Pride and Prejudice.