South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival – Executive Produced by Jessica Biel, the new show Cruel Summer will be available through Freeform beginning April 20th, 2021. For now, this 45-minute piece will be screening its first episode through SXSW Online 2021 within its “Episodic Premieres” category, offering some crime investigation and teen melodrama to this varied section of the film festival.

In episode 1, directed by Tia Napolitano, we are introduced to teenage girl Jeanette “Jenny” (Chiara Aurelia) over the course of 3 years on the same day — her birthday. A member of a typical nuclear family, Jeanette, despite her close friends, covets friendship with the popular girl, Kate (Olivia Holt). One day, Kate goes missing, and assumed to be dead, everyone moves on with their lives, except for Jeanette, who has seemingly moved into Kate’s life, somehow becoming the top girl herself. As the episode alludes, though Jeanette was once innocent, she may have had something to do with Kate’s disappearance.

Cruel Summer is set in the nineties but is not at all cheesy, in fact, as someone who loves all things even remotely reminiscent of the 1990s I may have appreciated them playing up the clothing, lingo, etc. even more. Cruel Summer is to the nineties as Stranger Things is to the eighties, encapsulating the time period with laser-pointer accuracy without going over the top. I already love the soundtrack for the show, featuring the likes of Janet Jackson, En Vogue, Garbage, and even Tiger Trap.

This pilot episode of Cruel Summer was told in non-chronological order, flitting back between 1993, 1994, and 1995 on the specific day of June 21st. Luckily, the writing in this show is done in such a way where it doesn’t lose coherency while using this story structure. Doing non-chronology seemed to make Cruel Summer a more interesting watch, because if it was just in chronological order the show would feel like it is just a saga of a boring teenage girl at first. The pilot shows that our protagonist started off as innocent and happy, however, the pilot also teases how bad things get for Jenny within the relatively short span of 2 years. Just enough of the story is left out of the first episode so that there is not a definitive answer as to whether Jenny’s situation deteriorated from her own doing or outside forces.

Jessica Biel executive producing this project is exciting. She is no stranger to 90s teen TV dramas having starred on 7th Heaven (1996), and Cruel Summer seems to be just that, a teen drama set in the 90s. This drama seems to be very darkly tinged though, as within the first episode we get possible murders, some unexpected physical violence, and hard-hitting emotional fallouts between characters — Cruel Summer looks like it will be quite the nightmarish trip back to high school.

Cruel Summer reviewed as part of our South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival coverage.

 

6.75 out of 10

 

Cruel Summer – Episode 1, “Pilot
RATING: NR No Trailer Available
Runtime: 45 Mins.
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About the Author

Adrienne Reese is a fan of movies - the good, the bad, and the ugly - and came to the horror genre by way of getting over her fear of... everything. Adrienne also writes for the Frida Cinema, and in addition to film enjoys cooking, Minesweeper, and binge-watching Game of Thrones.