Short Term 12 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Short Term 12 Blu-ray Movie Review

No 'Term' limits here.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 16, 2014

Being a foster child is an extremely hard way to be raised. I know this from personal experience—my father and his siblings were placed into foster care when they were rather young, after their mother died in childbirth and their father decided he couldn’t handle six children under the age of eight or so. The experience was so traumatic that my father absolutely refused to even discuss his childhood (it was an absolutely “verboten” subject when I and my sisters were being raised), and, even sadder, my father’s younger sister committed suicide as a young adult, something that my uncles (my father’s brothers) always ascribed to the emotional upheaval of being shuffled from one foster home to the next during her formative years. When my dad and his siblings weren’t living with foster families, they were returned to the residential foster care facility in New York City where their father had left them, and in a way, I experienced that phenomenon from a different angle when my first post-college girlfriend worked as a Child Care Worker at a similar residential facility in Portland, Oregon. I used to dread every day when she would come home, for she was frequently either in tears or just as likely in a rage over what she had experienced that day at work. Having weathered the storms which abound in the moving but sometimes difficult to watch Short Term 12, I now perhaps have a bit more perspective on my long ago girlfriend’s reactions, though the film also brought home to bear the horrible emotional toll being placed in a facility like the one depicted takes on the kids who have to stay there.

Grace (Brie Larson) is a twentysomething Child Care Worker who bikes to work everyday at the suburban residential care facility where she supervises the floor staff. This is an unusual facility (at least in terms of what I know about such places) in that one of the conceits of the film is that the residents—all at risk teenagers—are free to leave at any time, and the workers can’t stop them. They’re allowed to cajole and encourage the kids to stay put, but once the kids get off the grounds of the place, they’re evidently “good to go”, so to speak. I’ve personally never heard of such an arrangement at any foster care agency, but perhaps times have changed. What this means for the film is that at several times, various kids leave the premises—sometimes darting out in a mad scramble for freedom—and Grace and her cohorts either have to chase them down (which turns out to be the case with some of the younger escapees) or at least follow them and try to talk reason to them.

Grace has a disheveled but lovable coworker named Mason (John Gallagher, Jr.), and a few minutes into the film, after the first work day ends, it becomes clear that Grace and Mason are a couple. Grace is uncommonly gifted around the kids at work, but she seems a bit less competent in her domestic life. She’s given some unexpected news one day which actually involves Mason, but which she keeps from her boyfriend. Mason is incredibly patient and nurturing, but even he is growing tired of Grace’s tendency to shut him out of her thoughts and, more importantly, her emotions.

A trio of kids at the facility as well as a new worker named Nate (Rami Malek) end up propelling the story forward aside from the interpersonal dynamics between Grace and Mason. The eldest of the trio of focal kids is Marcus (Keith Stanfield), a black boy who’s about to turn 18 and who has to leave the facility at that point. Marcus is a gifted rapper (one of the film’s most moving scenes, and one which provided the art for the film’s theatrical release poster, is between Marcus and Mason as Mason beats a drum and Marcus raps about being a foster child). But he’s seriously unready to be foisted out into the “real world”, something that he himself is only too aware of. Next down the age chain is new arrival Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever), a mid-teen who comes from an affluent family, but who has been acting out lately, including cutting herself. She’s a gifted artist, a talent she shares with Grace, and so Grace tries to use a bit of art therapy to figure out what’s going on with the girl. The youngest of the focal children is the adorable Sammy (Alex Calloway), a freckle faced little boy who has had a number of traumas in his young life and who deals with everything by playing with dolls.

Some of the above summary may sound awfully pat, and while the opportunity for clichés abound in Short Term 12, the good news is that writer-director Destin Cretton delivers an often searing portrait of a variety of characters —kids and adults—facing various emotional crises that cause them to reevaluate their lives. An unlikely friendship between Jayden and Grace allows Grace to come to terms with some elements in her own past (and this aspect of the film is probably the most predictable, truth be told). But even with the occasional trite misstep, Short Term 12 is surprisingly effective. The bulk of the film is rather dour and even disturbing at times, but there are also a few stabs at humor (there’s a great scene between Jayden and Grace and a baseball bat which is quite amusing, though also somewhat harrowing at the same time). And despite considerable odds, the film actually ends up being incredibly uplifting. There’s also a naturalness to all of the performances that aids the film’s message indelibly. Larson and Gallagher anchor the film marvelously well, but the supporting turns by Dever and Stanfield are no less remarkable.

Short Term 12 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Short Term 12 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cinedigm with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. While this Red Epic shot feature has excellent detail and a reasonably sharp looking image, the overall look of this film is rather soft, with often low contrast. The best looking sequences here are the ones that take place out of doors, where the brightness boosts fine detail measurably and also offers a crisper overall appearance. The palette here is somewhat subdued, as probably befits the emotional tenor of the film, with many of the outfits cast in dull browns and blacks, and the interior of the facility kind of an egg white to light yellow color. Cretton and his cinematographer Brett Pawlak indulge in several extreme close-ups (take a look at screenshot 4 for a great example), which boast great fine detail, but they also have a habit of framing many scenes with foreground objects (almost always out of focus) taking up quite a bit of the frame, with the actual focal element in the background, something that, along with the ever popular handheld "jiggly cam" tendencies, tends to make the film seem softer than it probably is.

Short Term 12 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Short Term 12's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is surprisingly immersive, given the rather small scale ambitions of the film. The crowded, often cacophonous, confines of the care facility offer some good opportunities for discrete channelization, and the rap scene between Marcus and Mason presents good separation. Dialogue is very cleanly presented, though that said, there are several moments in the film where hysteria reins and it's at least a bit difficult to make out what's being said. Fidelity is excellent here, and dynamic range is somewhat wider than might be expected from a drama like this.

Short Term 12 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes (1080p; 22:06) is a pretty typical EPK-fest, but does have some interesting candid footage of the cast.


• Making the Music (1080p; 6:32) looks at the recording sessions for the film.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 22:37)


• Short Term 12: The Original Short Film (1080i; 21:40)


• Cast & Crew Screening Featuring The Shivers (1080p; 2:25)


• Trailer (1080p; 2:26)


• TV Spot 1 (1080p; 00:18)


• TV Spot 2 (1080i; 00:33)


• Foster Care Outreach Info provides a page with various websites that offer support for foster kids and families.

Short Term 12 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Short Term 12 could have devolved into the indie film equivalent of a Lifetime made for television movie, so kudos are in order to the pitch perfect cast and especially to Cretton, who has written believable and sympathetic characters who ring true even as potential cliché ridden pitfalls abound. This is one film where the light at the end of the tunnel turns out not to be a train headed squarely for the viewer, and it's a refreshing change of pace to find a small scale film like this that isn't immune to celebrating the triumph of the human spirit. Highly recommended.