Megan Park knows it’s hard to create a perfect coming-of-age film—from both in front of and behind the camera. The Canadian filmmaker, 38, was among the ensemble on the classic ABC Family teen soap The Secret Life of the American Teenager for over 100 episodes, before transitioning from acting to writing and directing with the 2021 high school-set drama The Fallout, starring a pre-Wednesday Jenna Ortega. Park impressed festival audiences with her award-winning film about a student reeling from trauma following a school shooting—and her latest project My Old Ass, captures another lightning-in-a-bottle moment. Like her directorial debut, Park’s sophomore feature tells a mesmerizing, authentic Gen Z story and finds another breakout talent in Maisy Stella.
My Old Ass is a different kind of coming-of-age story—one where Stella’s high school grad character Elliott has the privilege of being guided into young adulthood by the older version of herself (played by Aubrey Plaza), who appears to her while she’s high on shrooms. The film is best experienced with no spoilers besides the one warning the elder Elliott, nicknamed My Old Ass by teenaged Elliott, gives her younger self: Stay away from a guy named Chad. The subsequent journey of angst, questioning, and growth, undertaken during Elliott’s final days before heading from her home on a cranberry farm to the big city of Toronto for college, was created with care and empathy, with Park cultivating a set where Stella and the film’s other young stars (including Maddie Ziegler and Kerrice Brooks) felt comfortable.
