The opening scene of Antarctica sees its two high school senior protagonists, Janet (Kimie Muroya) and Kat (Chloë Levine), lying on the floor and making fun of a classmate of theirs who seems to be unequivocally happy. The lifelong best friends list off the numerous reasons why genuine happiness is virtually the same as insanity these days, ending with the succinct notion that the two of them are “doomed.” Cut to opening titles, which feature Janet and Kat’s heads spinning in microwave ovens until the final credit, whereupon their heads explode in gory detail. This movie is not subtle. 

That aggressive lack of subtlety, along with an overall black comedic tone and meticulous visual aesthetic, is what makes Antarctica its own unique experience. Teen dramedies have been a mainstay of cinema ever since John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club (1985), with each generation getting one or several milestone films that comment on the craziness of their times as well as the recurring hardships of adolescence. Antarctica, writer/director Keith Bearden’s second feature, seeks to be such a film for the teens of 2020, and it does a pretty excellent job at capturing the nihilistic hopelessness of what Gen Z must be going through at a time that’s been easy on no one. Interestingly, none of what Janet and Kat endure in the film is expressly topical. Unlike 2018’s of-the-moment Assassination Nation (or that film’s ancestor, 1988’s Heathers), Antarctica could almost take place anytime during the 2010s. Its core issues regarding teen pregnancy/abortion, bullying (cyber and otherwise), drug abuse/overmedication, therapy and the awkwardness of a first love are virtually timeless. What makes the film applicable to the present day is its irreverent, surrealistic and satiric approach, a sense of hardships piling one on top of the other that defines the late 2010s.

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With the exception of Bearden’s first feature, Meet Monica Velour (2010), he has primarily directed a handful of shorts, and it’s that history that most informs Antarctica. The movie is structured around the various misadventures of Janet and Kat, with a rift in their friendship over Kat attempting to “grow up” and away from her less conventionally attractive and unpopular friend Janet sending each on their own journey. This gives Bearden license to make each girl’s experience episodic, bordering on sketch or short form stories. Kat hooks up with the class clown, resulting in an unwanted pregnancy that leads to an abortion and then being enrolled in a sex addiction rehab clinic. Meanwhile, a vengeful Janet’s attack on Kat’s hook up causes her to be placed on a trendy new medication marketed to women, and during her many hallucinations while on the meds (a side effect given prominence in the medication’s advertising, of course) she meets a boy wearing a spacesuit, Rian (Bubba Weiler) who may or may not be a figment of her pill-addled mind. Bearden’s aesthetic is unquestionably indie — he and cinematographer Madeline Kate Kann compose every scene with an attention to detail and symmetry that’s reminiscent of Wes Anderson and Jonathan Dayton/Valerie Faris, with Andrew Hollander providing a plucky, sickly-sweet score akin to that of Jon Brion. Given Antarctica’s variety as well as its tendency to let its satiric, dark humor occasionally slip into horror (especially during Janet’s drug trips and Kat’s tenure within the rehab clinic), the movie feels like a cousin of the shows and shorts featured on Adult Swim — defiantly weird and unafraid to be disturbing. 

This unfortunately means that Antarctica isn’t the smoothest watch, as it can be difficult to get a grip on the film as it unfolds. The heart of the movie is eventually revealed to be Janet and Kat’s friendship, yet the film keeps them apart for the bulk of the runtime, which is doubly a shame given Murova and Levine’s great chemistry. The episodic/short film nature of Antarctica takes a while to settle, too, with each “segment” having its own tone and rhythm yet never going so far as to feel like an anthology. As a result, it’s difficult to get fully emotionally invested in the characters or the story the first time around — that quality vastly improves upon a rewatch, when one knows where the plot and the characters are headed. Antarctica is a distancing film, in other words, and this may have been part of the intention given the movie’s title, which is deliberately never mentioned or explained. 

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That said, the cold numbness of Antarctica perfectly encapsulates the constant physical and emotional hardship faced not just by the current teen generation, but girls in particular. Every element in the movie is skewed toward comedy (helped by a fantastic ensemble cast, all of whom get a moment or two to shine) as a sort of coping mechanism given the circumstances Janet and Kat find themselves in. Kat’s ordeal at the hands of an abortion doctor whose day job is a pediatrician is like the nightmare David Lynch version of this year’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always, while Janet and Rian’s tender courtship feels like an indie romance tucked inside Casper Kelly’s “Too Many Cooks,” with bizarro characters invading the margins of the frame. While Janet and Kat spend much of the movie separated, they keep coming back to each other, their friendship an oasis of sorts in the midst of so much strife and stress — their world is one where Janet cheers Kat up by floating the possibility that a school shooting might happen to take attention away from Kat’s sex scandal. Murova makes Janet an abrasive girl with a deep caring and thoughtfulness underneath that rarely surfaces but is always there, and Levine gives Kat an inner strength that is often the only thing keeping her together. Janet and Kat are shown constantly to be in their own island of sanity, as pretty much everyone around them (especially every adult and authority figure) are completely clueless and incompetent at best. In that way, Antarctica’s unexplained title gets all the explanation it needs — these two girls are alone in a wasteland of strife and insanity, but at least they have each other.

Bill Bria (@billbria) is a writer, actor, songwriter and comedian. ‘Sam & Bill Are Huge,’ his 2017 comedy music album with partner Sam Haft, reached #1 on an Amazon Best Sellers list, and the duo maintains an active YouTube channel and plays regularly all across the country. Bill‘s acting credits include an episode of HBO’s ‘Boardwalk Empire’ and a featured parts in Netflix’s ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ and CBS’ ‘Instinct.’ His film writing can also be seen at Crooked Marquee as well as his own website. Bill lives in New York City.