Metacritic reviews

Raiff is so credible in the part one can't help but suspect there's a lot of him in Alex; the film's willingness to look so frankly at his vulnerability, in an unmanipulative way, feels especially refreshing now.

One of the most extraordinary debuts of the year.

The whole movie is suspended in a pleasant and intimate space between order and chaos, love and abandonment, leaving the nest and building a new one. Every time Shithouse borrows from something else, it only seems to become more itself.

Though the film’s casual structure lulls you into thinking not much is going on, the gently shifting power dynamics between the characters, and a reversal of the traditional gender roles sets up an unexpectedly moving resolution.

Shithouse, written and directed by the 22-year-old Cooper Raiff, tells a familiar story with a specificity that cannot be ignored.

Few movies grab the lonely, lost and timeless suck of freshman year at college as well as Shithouse, the debut feature of writer, director and co-star Cooper Raiff.

The movie won the grand prize at this year’s Slamdance, an even more indie Sundance-adjacent festival, and it marks the arrival of an earnest talent in writer-director-star Cooper Raiff. It’s also the rare youth movie to dispense with cynicism and wear its heart on its sleeve.

At its best, the movie captures the thrill of those moments, whether romantic or friendly, when you realize something special is happening.

This story of a homesick college freshman, played affectingly by Raiff himself, doesn’t break any new ground - it doesn’t even try - but his film is still an appealing charmer.

Raiff deserves credit for an unexpectedly elliptical coda, but much of the chatter between the leads has the emo-tedium of dorm room blather.