Shook

This movie is a love letter to toronto and the gta. Seeing toronto and scarborough so central to a film made me appreciate the city so much more and made me reflect on how lucky i am to live here. The storyline did a great job merging the main characters romantic life with his career and family struggles. Also very funny at times (the time the girl said "Oh! Scarborough!"). I loved seeing the intricacies of all his relationships and how they develop. Most of all, it felt so raw and authentic to growing up in the suburbs and life after college. The ending was perfect in its own right, and it makes you yearn for what could be and what the future could look like.

It's a Canadian immigrant family drama set in the 2020s in Scarborough and downtown Toronto. Ashish (Saamer Usmani) immigrated to Canada from India when he was in grade 6. His parents, Vijay (Bernard White) and Nisha (Pamela Sinha), have recently divorced after Vijay's infidelity. His younger brother, Hari (Sharjil Rasool), appears unmotivated. Ash has recently completed an MFA degree, is trying to sell a completed novella, and hangs out with old friends, including Dave (Sammy Azero), a newly minted neurologist.

The film follows Ash's complicated life with his family and his summertime girlfriend, Claire (Amy Forsyth), especially when his estranged father is diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.

"Shook" is a quintessential Canadian movie, celebrating its location and meandering through an understated drama. It feels 20 minutes too long, diluting the impact of the dramatic moments. Everyone seems "nice" and lacking a real edge. Saamer Usmani does a nice job, as does Amy Forsyth with modest roles.

If the characters were not flawed (and mildly irritating), the story would be less interesting. The immigrant parents follow a pattern of being secretive, and communicating only when needed . Mid-20s Ash blames his father's infidelity for causing his parents' marriage breakup, and so ignores his mother's entreaties (without explanation) to call his father, as well as his father's phone calls. His father, in return, invades Ash's sanctum of a Hakka restaurant, which he frequents with "his boys" - friends from childhood.

His father's tremors has been diagnosed as Parkinson's. The parents seem to have picked the correct son to lean on, as Ash's brother seems to be an unemployed layabout. Ash, however, switches into take-charge mode, getting groceries, trying to teach his father to cook, introducing him to a cannibas store, and getting his father appointments with medical specialists. However, his father prefers to withdraw, missing the possibility of brain stimulation therapy, which would avoid the side effects of his medication. He also does not tell Ash that he likes his job as a bus driver, while Ash enthuses about the possibility of a softer job in a collector's booth.

Ash is an aspiring writer, but his novella is going nowhere. He commutes daily from suburban Scarborough to a downtown Toronto coffee shop "to write", but mostly just stares at his computer. He refuses to write a stereotypical immigrant novel, like the author in American Fiction (2023) refusing to write a Black ghetto novel. Also, he is going by the dictum of "write what you know", but does not go out and get life experiences, like the protagonist in Trick (1999) and Sebastian (2024). His nightlife, too, is downtown, often with the threat of missing the last train home.

At the coffee shop, Ash meets and develops a relationship with barista Claire, the only major White character. Claire has moved over 2,000 miles away from home for university, but also another 300 miles for a summer job. For reasons I can only guess at, Claire demands that her Brown customers give her their "real" names to write on their cups, not just an easy-to-pronounce White name. Ash, meanwhile, exhibits reverse-generation racism, after finding (from his father) that not only his mother has a new boyfriend, but that he is White.

This is a good portrait of the Scarborough - Toronto dynamic. While technically amalgamated into the City of Toronto, Scarborough still feels that it is an inferior suburb, unsuccessfully aspiring to downtown status, like our protagonist Ash.

Not everything has to be made for everyone. I think in this era where we often view art from the lens of "mass appeal" and "profitability," it's easy to forget that. Shook is not a movie that I personally connected with because it's a movie - to borrow a term - made for us, by us.

Toronto is known as Hollywood North and it's essentially a universal experience for residents in and around the city to "see" the city in film, but never have it portrayed as the city on film. That's why Shook in many ways feels so refreshing; it's unapologetically Canadian, Torontonian, and Scarberian. Scarberian being the (sometimes derisive) term for people living in Scarborough, the extremely diverse suburb at the east end of the city, and the youngest "district" to formally become a part of Toronto (think of it like as borough in New York City).

This movie in a lot of ways is so appealing because it just "gets" us. If you've lived close enough to Toronto to see the glimmering skyline in the background, you get what director Amar Wala is going for. You've probably been a Toronto house party just like the one that caps off this film. You've met people who act like anywhere outside of the downtown core is a foreign country. You've also been subject to (either first hand or by searching) incredibly brutal cost of living and competitive job market in the city.

That being said, I don't think the film translates these ideas into truly "universal" themes very well, even if it's clearly what the film is going for.

There is an overriding "student film" vibe to this movie; visually and editing wise, it looks pretty great and captures what it's intended to well. The shot composition, blocking, and lighting are actually quite good.

But it's in the editing, pacing, and script where it's fairly obvious. Shook is most definitely a slice of life movie, following Scarborough native Ash (Sameer Usmani) as he juggles a moribund writing career, his parent's divorce, his Dad's (Bernard White) Parkinson's diagnosis and a budding romance with Claire (Amy Forsyth), a barista who's about to leave for Montreal in a month.

These refreshingly ordinary issues could result in a wealth of story telling; the film tries to create a conflict between Ash's sense of place and Claire's transient nomadism, but never really explores it in any detail. In fact, a lot of the conflicts seem to exist to give some weight to conversation, and are resolved just as easily.

Thankfully, the performances are generally pretty good and give a lot of character and personality to a film that otherwise wouldn't have much based on the script alone.

The end result though is a film that kind of meanders, lacks any real structure, and sort of just ends. I wish there was another script revision to give the film a bit more structure, because coming in a around 2 hours, there simply isn't a lot here to work with.

That being said, I'm cognizant of the fact that this is a deeply personal film and one that I found myself liking despite its flaws. My hope is that director Amar Wala can build on this and improve.