Breakup Season (2025) Movie Review: A gentle, moving holiday movie that takes a look at why certain relationships just don’t work

As hard as it is to digest, nice people also end up having relationship breakdowns. Very few films out there feature two nice people trying to make things work but are unable to. Although H Nelson Tracey’s debut feature film, “Breakup Season,” is not about making things work, it is a story about allowing people to be honest about their feelings and accepting that your lifelong dream of having a life together will not come to fruition.

At the onset, “Breakup Season” feels like a sweet holiday romance. Ben (Chandler Riggs) and Cassie (Samantha Isler) live in L.A. and after a cute montage that shows us the initial stage of their relationship, we meet them for the first time when they arrive in rural Oregon – Ben’s hometown where the two of them are supposed to spend the holidays with his family. Ben is extremely excited for this next stage of their relationship, carefully planning ahead to make sure Cassie is comfortable spending the season in an environment that makes her finally feel like she is a part of a family unit – unlike how things have been with her own.

However, a heated dinner conversation during the first night of Cassie being in Ben’s home completely shatters the possibility of her ever truly being a part of this family. When Gordon (Jacob Wysocki), Ben’s elder brother – an isolated but super-pissed-at–the-world, middle-aged man tries to reason with Cassie about her opinions being a faux extension of her half-realized personality, Cassie is forced to reevaluate her liking for Ben.

It’s not a sudden realization or something that Cassie just does because she can’t take a person bullying her. However, the argument is enough for her to realize that being with Ben has been extremely suffocating and tiring all this while. So much so that she can’t take it anymore and would like to split right away. But Ben, being his usual self tries to turn things around for himself, especially after the whole situation turns super-odd when she is unable to leave the family home due to bad weather conditions and is stuck till after Christmas.

Isolated in an attic room, with an ex constantly trying to win you over is not an ideal situation at all. Of course, a person who is on the other end of the dumping zone, the one who is made to understand that they are the problem is down under, but let’s be honest – the one who does the dumping is equally affected. Especially if your space, ability to process the event, and the trajectory to heal are inadvertently affected by being enclosed in a space that doesn’t allow you to. “Breakup Season,” thus becomes a film about Cassie and how she navigates this strange scenario. H Nelson Tracey writes her with gentle, fully-realized brush strokes, allowing the character to become our point-of-view to this situation. The narrative is, of course, focused on her, but that doesn’t mean we skip or paddle along these fascinating characters around her.

Ben’s dad Kirby is this giddy head of the unit, whose innocence for loving trains, love for his wife, and a genuine but not overwhelming care for his children feels palpable. In one of my favorite scenes, he takes an anxious and angry Ben to the train tracks, for him to release the pent-up tension and distress from being called out as the problem in the relationship when in his head, he is supposed to be the who fixes everything. Ben’s mother Mia is this gentle, warm presence who is the one taking the weight of keeping things together – especially when his children have these distinctive personalities. It feels like an honor to witness her navigate Cassie’s dilemma by understanding and empathizing with her side of the story when she is expected to be bound to her child. Liz and Gordon are characters that might, in an underwritten film have felt like one-dimensional characters, but here, they do earn their parts well.

However, it is Ben’s character that doesn’t sit well with me. It is either the lack of connective tissue that we have with his past, present, and supposed future that hinders us from completely relating to his frustration or his failure to snap out of his current situation. It is also possible that Chandler Riggs plays him with a heavy-handed approach; making his overall acr feel unearned. It also doesn’t help that the film ends on a perfect note before deciding to traverse to an epilogue that tries to give Ben an overreaching arc.

That said, “Breakup Season” is a gentle, moving holiday movie that takes a look at why certain relationships just don’t work.