Don’t Grow Up (2015) is a coming of age story with an infected crazies twist. It’s an interesting idea let down by all kinds of inconsistencies that take you out of the story.
On an island supposedly off the coast of England, six teenagers in a youth centre wake up one morning and quickly realise they’re unsupervised. Right out of the gate there’s a lack of clarity. For example, which island are we on? Isle of Wight, Isle of Man, one of the many off the coast of Scotland? None of these places resemble the location on screen.
Then there’s the centre. The locked doors and supervision suggest a secure unit. In which case, why are (incredibly well spoken) “at risk” kids housed in mixed sex units? The film was actually shot on location in the Canary Islands, so why not set it there? How hard would it be to frame this as six “at risk” kids on one of those character building adventure courses?
Anyway, returning to the film, the initial response of the kids to their unsupervised freedom, they break into and ransack the supervisor’s office. The gob-shite banter gets more prosaic after they find and promptly empty a bottle of whiskey. Finishing the bottle provides the excuse the script needs to go on a booze-run to the local village, where one of the group conveniently has the keys to a supermarket.
While three of the boys rob the place, they each come face to bloody pipe, knife of glass, raging mother, with the true nature of the crisis; adults have become ultra-violent dead-eyed killers.
It’s during this explosion of ultra-violence the films already weakened credibility takes an almighty beating. One of the number finds a gun hidden under the supermarket counter. Guns are not a big part of British culture, they’re strictly controlled, and the overwhelming majority don’t have access to them. Finding a gun under the counter might play in the States, it might even make sense in Spain, but not in England.
The rest of the film brings murder and mayhem, love and loss, and the dawning realisation that growing up, becoming an adult, is about actions not a number, and no matter how hard you try your environment will forces adulthood on you.
Not a film I’d watch again.
