Review: ‘An Autumn Summer’

2025 / Dir. Jared Isaac

☆ 4/5

There’s just no way I wasn’t gonna go for Jared Isaac’s debut feature An Autumn Summer, a sincere coming of age story with timeless and universal themes at its center like friendship, love, and taking the next step at the precipice of adulthood. Adeptly anchored by Mark McKenna and Lukita Maxwell as a teen couple on vacation in Michigan with family and friends, the film wanders along with them through their last days of summer as they reckon with their future while trying to live in the moment, with some needle drops and the lightest dash of magical realism along the way. Kudos to Isaac and cinematographer Brandon Somerhalder for so lovingly capturing summer in the Northwoods of the upper Midwest, where the lakes and forests and sand dunes play host to the kind of playful and probing conversations that only a group of eighteen year olds untainted by cynicism or bitterness can bring to life.

Watch if you like: Megan Park’s My Old Ass, #lakelife, and vibes over plot.

—Chad Comello