There are a few things I really appreciated about “Suncoast,” writer-director Laura Chinn’s memoirish remembrance of the slow, wasting death of a sibling.

Characters live through story arcs, reminding us of the hope that even the most lost among us can change.

Characters transcend the “types” that the movie sets them up to be. Yes, teenage girls can be mean, shallow and and vapid. But nobody is merely their worst traits, which for teens are almost certainly temporary.

The performances have a wonderful sensitivity, with Laura Linney at her brittle best, Woody Harrelson at his warmest playing a very controversial type of activist and nepo baby Nico Parker (the spitting image of mom Thandiwie Newton) holding her own with them playing a teen who comes of age in a trying, testing and touching way.

And it’s a movie of consequence, revisiting the “Right to Die” culture wars of the early 2000s. Set in Florida, it’s a tale of learning ethics and morality and personal responsibility and has as its backdrop the infamous Terri Schiavo case, politicized by fanatical activists and opportunistic Governor Jeb “Please Clap” Bush.

Doris (Parker) is a seventeen year-old with big responsibilities. She’s the one who wheels her older brother about and cares for him when Mom (Linney) isn’t around.

Max is not quite vegetative, but he’s uncommunicative and has been for quite some time. And as we meet this family in their little pink cinderblock bungalow, it’s time to put Max in Suncoast hospice.

Mom doesn’t want to hear any complaints about being late for (Christian) school. If Doris is needed to help get Max in and out of the pickup and into the hospice, “I’ll write you a note.”

Mom Kristine is irritable, domineering and quick to guilt-trip her youngest kid about all that Doris isn’t doing for her brother. We get the impression that Kristine has been a walking, raging, judging panic-attack about this tragedy forever.

And Doris is over it. SO over it.

The first person she can let on that her mom is “a monster” and that all Doris wants at this stage is “a normal” teenage life is a friendly stranger (Harrelson) among the sign-waving protesters in front of Suncoast. They’re protesting Terri Schiavo’s husband’s efforts to let her die in that hospice, backing Schiavo’s parents’ legal struggle to prolong her vegetative life.

“Every life is precious,” Paul insists. But Paul isn’t some red-in-the-face ranter, just a wounded guy who felt called to come down and protest with people a lot more vehement than him.

Kristine’s constant “Will you THINK of your brother?” tirades at Doris tell us she’s only focused on one thing. The fact that she doesn’t flinch when she sees her teen daughter hanging with a 50ish loner from out of town shows us just how checked-out she’s become.

But Mom’s increasing devotion to Max has her insisting that she’ll keep crossing the protest lines (Schiavo was actually at a hospice named Woodside) and spend the night at Suncoast so he won’t be alone. A hurricane’s coming? So what? Doris will be “fine” alone.

“So you have to use a flashlight for a few hours.”

That’s how Doris stumbles into her first grasp at normality with her classmates, none of whom know her name. Their “hurricane party” plans have fallen through. Wait. My MOM won’t be home. Come to my house.

Thus pretty Doris finds herself tight with class bombshells Laci (Daniella Taylor), Britney (Ella Anderson), Megan (Ariel Martin) and dreamy Nate (Amarr of “American Housewife”). Drinking, “weed” and fake IDs are her initiation.

Chinn lets us judge these characters and decide they’re using Doris the way unpopular teens are always used in the movies. And then she upends those expectations.

Similarly, we can accuse, judge and convict Kristine and buy into the “monster” label, witness her theatrical insults to the staff and showdowns with a cop trying to protect a hospice from the bomb threats the crazies out front have been calling in.

“Everyone in there is about to die, anyway! Who’ll want to waste a bomb on that place?”

But there’s a human being inside that raging harpy.

Actress turned writer (TV’s “Florida Girls”) and director Chinn’s script flings Kristine about on the emotional roller coaster she’s living through, blind to the fact that Doris is trying to make her own decisions, some of which she’s sure to regret.

Both characters are fascinating to watch, with Linney pinning the “unlikable” needle, even as we start to see the person behind the fury.

Harrelson’s odd and seemingly sketchy character exists simply to personalize the Right to Die debate and maybe settle it, at least in the writer-director’s mind.

There’s a feeling that all of this isn’t quite coming together at many points in the film, that Chinn pulls her intellectual and emotional punches. But scenes set in a Christian school’s ethics class and at “the most important night of our lives” high school prom get the movie’s messages across.

And the relationships, messy as they are, leave us with the hope that things will work out, just not easily or tidily.

As “mixed bag” coming-of-age dramas go, “Suncoast” surprises with its heart and consistently punches above its emotional weight.

Rating: R, teen drug and alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Nico Parker, Laura Linney, Woody Harrelson,
Daniella Taylor, Amar, Ella Anderson, Ariel Martin and Pam Doughtery.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Laura Chinn. A Searchlight release on Hulu.

Running time: 1:49