mid90s (2018)
Jonah Hill is perhaps not the first name you would expect on a director's chair for a quiet, personal coming-of-age film. Best known as a performer across broad comedies and a string of awards-friendly supporting turns, Hill spent years quietly working on what would become his feature debut, mid90s, released in 2018 through A24, the independent studio that has made a habit of backing precisely this kind of small-scale, tonally specific work. (Their track record with youth-oriented or genre-adjacent projects, from It Follows to Bodies Bodies Bodies, suggests they have a good nose for films that trust their audience.) Shot on 16mm film in a 4:3 aspect ratio, the picture wears its period setting on its sleeve: this is Los Angeles in the mid-nineties, captured with a grainy warmth that feels less like deliberate stylisation and more like genuine recollection. The budget was modest, reportedly in the region of five to ten million dollars, and Hill wrote the screenplay himself, drawing on his own memories of that scene, that moment, that particular flavour of American adolescence.
The film follows thirteen-year-old Stevie, a boy from a difficult home who drifts into the orbit of an older crowd of skaters he meets through a shop on the high street. It is a simple premise, the kind that lives or dies by the authenticity of its characters rather than the mechanics of its plot. At home, Stevie contends with a distant, occasionally volatile older brother (Lucas Hedges, doing a great deal with a relatively limited amount of screen time) and a mother played by Katherine Waterston, an actress whose particular quality of restrained, internalised feeling suits the role well. Among the skaters, the emotional centre of gravity is Ray, played by Na-kel Smith, a real-life professional skater making his acting debut. Smith is one of several non-professional cast members drawn directly from the skating world, and that casting decision pays off: there is a physical ease and a social credibility to the group scenes that no amount of coaching could fully manufacture. Sunny Suljic, who was around ten years old during production, carries the film with a performance that is watchful and understated, the kind of child acting that registers as behaviour rather than performance.
Hill brought in cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, who has worked with directors including Gus Van Sant and Kelly Reichardt, and the collaboration produces images that are textured and unshowy, polished but unremarkable in the best possible sense. The period detail, from the clothing to the hardware to the soundtrack (hip-hop, alternative rock, the whole nineties sonic landscape), is handled with care rather than nostalgia-baiting. This is not a film that points at its references; it simply inhabits them. For viewers who came of age around the same era, there is an almost involuntary recognition in the way it reconstructs the rhythms of a specific kind of youth. For those who did not, there is still something worth finding in its portrait of belonging, risk, and the strange, fierce loyalty that forms between young people who have, for one reason or another, been left largely to their own devices. It is the kind of film that Youth gestures towards from a very different angle, though Hill is clearly working from lived-in material here rather than observation from a distance.
There is a very specific, visceral thump to the soundtrack of Jonah Hill’s 2018 directorial debut, mid90s, that instantly transported me back to my own adolescence. I was a skater kid growing up in the UK, and listening to those tracks brought back a flood of memories of cruising the pavement with a boombox blasting, completely oblivious to the dangers of the concrete beneath our wheels.
Watching this film now, however, brings a profound sense of worry; seeing the underage drinking, the reckless experimentation with drugs and girls, and the sheer, unadulterated recklessness of it all makes me incredibly grateful I’m watching it from the safety of my living room as a father. Yet, that terrifying authenticity is exactly what I experienced growing up and what makes the picture such a cracking, immersive experience. It doesn't just feel like a movie set in the 1990s; it feels like a home video unearthed from a forgotten VHS tape.
At the heart of this nostalgic time capsule is the deeply relatable, universally understood quest to find "your people". We follow young Stevie, played with a wonderful, quiet vulnerability by Sunny Suljic, as he figures out his place in the treacherous social hierarchy of his local skate shop. Fair play to Hill for assembling such a remarkably strong cast, particularly given that several of the older skaters are actual non-professionals pulled straight from the scene. The camaraderie between the boys is endearing and touching, but it’s the heavier emotional beats that truly anchor the film. The standout moment for me was a deeply affecting, quietly devastating scene between Stevie and the most positive influence from his new friends, Ray, played brilliantly by Na-Kel Smith, which grounds the film's chaotic energy in genuine human frailty.
Interestingly, my own perspective on the narrative has shifted significantly since my own skateboarding days. While the reckless antics of the crew are undeniably entertaining, I found myself emotionally resonating far more with Stevie’s perpetually worried mother, played by Katherine Waterston, than with the kids themselves. This shift in empathy highlights the film's only real drawback: its somewhat superficial treatment of the lifestyle's fatal consequences. We watch the character Fuckshit casually throw away his immense talent to a haze of alcohol and narcotics, and we see Stevie constantly taking life-threatening risks on his board, but the script never truly probes the dark, destructive reality of this world. Unlike Lords of Dogtown, which fully examines the tragic cost of that specific subculture, mid90s occasionally romanticises the very behaviours that can destroy these kids' lives.
Despite that narrative blind spot, the sheer, unvarnished charm of the picture is impossible to deny. Hill has crafted a deeply affectionate, beautifully shot love letter to a bygone era of youth culture, capturing the bruised knees, the broken bones, and the fierce, fleeting friendships that define growing up. It is a remarkably assured debut that balances laugh-out-loud humour with genuine emotional weight, proving that the director has a keen eye for the messy, complicated reality of adolescence. It might not be a flawless examination of skate culture's darker underbelly, but as a vivid, pulsating snapshot of a specific time and place, it is an absolute triumph.
mid90s arrived at a moment when A24 was cementing its reputation for backing films that treat adolescence as a subject worthy of serious attention rather than easy sentiment, and it fits comfortably within that company. At eighty-six minutes, it does not outstay its welcome, and the questions it raises about what we romanticise when we look back at youth, and what we conveniently leave out, linger in the way that the best short films do. Hill has since moved on to other projects, but this debut suggests a filmmaker with a genuine feeling for human mess, for the comedy and the pain that tend to arrive together when you are young and working things out. Whether he returns to this register remains to be seen. As a single statement, though, it more than holds up: a bruised, affectionate, occasionally uncomfortable little film that knows exactly what it is, and gets on with being it.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2018 | Watched: 2026-08-03
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for mid90s (2018) on YouTube
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