Movies That Altered My Brain Chemistry: Waves (2019)

🎬 Movie: Waves (2019) 

📖Description: The epic emotional journey of a suburban African American family as they navigate love, forgiveness, and coming together in the wake of a tragic loss.

 ⏱Running Time: 2h 15m 

🎭Genres: Romance, Comedy, Melodrama, Musical, Drama, Sports 

💬My Favorite Quote: “I hate him, I hate him so much.” 

🌊My Favorite Detail: I love the parallels between Tyler at the beginning and Emily in the end. Especially in the way they did some of the same things, but it was his downfall and her redemption. 

I went into this movie thinking it was about a teen pregnancy after seeing an edit on TikTok. I didn't read the description, so I went in blind. It starts off with a seemingly normal Black suburban family, they go to church, go out to eat, and talk to each other. They look like the picture perfect family from the outside. But even early on, there’s this underlying tension. The kind that you hear in silences, see in the glances they give each other, in the way they all seem to be holding themselves back. It’s subtle, but heavy. 

As the movie unfolds, you realize just how fragile everyone in the family is. It’s not just one person’s downfall, it’s them slowly unravelling each other in a collective breaking of each other. You see it in the way the dad’s need to be successful turned into him pressuring Tyler to be perfect. It’s how the pressure caused Tyler to become sneaky until he finally cracked. And how the mother’s silent complicity became Emily’s silent watching. Each of them is carrying something they can’t fully say out loud pressure, guilt, grief, fear. And none of them really know how to hold it together, let alone hold each other. 

Waves doesn’t give you a neat, digestible version of pain. It just shows it in a messy, loud, quiet, beautifully devastating way. One choice, one night, one mistake, and the brutal ripple effect. And somehow, despite all that, the second half of the film lets you breathe again. It’s softer. It focuses on healing, not fixing the aftermath after the fallout. It doesn’t try to erase the damage, it just shows that even after the worst parts of ourselves explode, we can still move forward.  

I didn’t expect to relate to Emily. At first, she’s quite at first more of a background character while the chaos unfolds. She’s always watching and seeing things she probably shouldn’t. But after Tyler goes to jail, once the film shifts, it becomes her story. Her silence. Her grief. Her way of carrying something she didn’t cause but still has to live with every day. That part hit way too close for me. 

With my own brother in jail, I relate to her wayyy too much. I felt it in every scene she was in. When you love someone who’s done something terrible, no one tells you how to hold the love, the pain, and the hate at the same time. I relate to how she felt like she should have seen signs or stopped it, even though she never knew. While he lives in jail, she has to live with her mother and father, watching them fall apart. She not only lived in Tyler’s shadow, but she now had to live in the shadow of his actions. I get her because her character made me feel represented in a way I never thought I would be. They used a nearly invisible character to make me feel seen. The movie felt like watching a raw reflection of my mind. Emily’s journey isn’t about fixing what happened. It’s about learning to keep living with it. And that’s something I think about all the time. Cause it's something I unfortunately have to learn how to do.  I’ve always been a glass child, but now it's in an entirely different way. 

✩If you’ve seen Waves, I’d love to know what hit you the hardest, and if you haven’t, just be ready to feel everything at once.✩