A Girl Like Her

Saw this movie by chance - was looking for something to watch, opened up Netflix, and it was on the main screen as a suggested title. With a cast of mostly unknowns, I wasn't expecting much. But I was surprised.

The acting was mostly very good. Lexi Ainsworth was very believable as the bullied Jessica. I cried along with her, as someone who was also bullied in high school. (To a lesser extent, and before cell phones and social media were really a thing yet.)

For the most part, the story was believable and moving. My only problem with it was that it reinforces the false assumption that bullies usually have a difficult home life. This was the kind of information that was generally believed to be true back when I was in school (graduated high school in 2002), but we know a lot more today. Most bullies come from good families and have good lives.

By the end of the film, I felt like we were supposed to feel a certain amount of sympathy for Avery. But despite how things were portrayed - her life was really not that bad at all. I felt that a lot of things were exaggerated.

Avery wasn't bullying Jessica because her parents fought sometimes and her mom was a little controlling, she was bullying Jessica because she was a cruel, mean, heartless, narcissistic brat. No one with a conscience could treat another person that way. Period. No sympathy for bullies.

I was a little disheartened reading some of the movie reviews for this feature and the overall metascore. This was a powerful indie flick that was financed through crowdsourcing on a shoestring budget. It does not have big names and doesn't need them. The kids play their parts professionally. The raw emotion is there and for anyone who has been on the receiving end of the emotional beat down that happens here, this movie should hit a nerve. It did with me. The only downsides to it are the shaky-cam effect that comes with a faux documentary. It's a bit heavy-handed, so to speak, but tolerable. Avery's Mom is a little over the top in the crazy Mom department, but I'm sure this type exists. At least it does on reality TV. Avery's Dad is a doormat and gets stepped on most of the scenes, but I don't think he truly got hurt when the mother berated him for not washing his hands after using the bathroom. I think there could have been something more compelling in that argument to side us against the Mother in addition to her other character flaws. This movie will affect you, director Amy Weber grabs you from the very beginning and draws you into the disturbing side of high school cliques. It had me choked up many times, angry other times, sympathetic most of the time and I left knowing I was right when I thought this movie had potential to make a difference. Go see it, bring your pre-teen and/or teen.

It was an interesting take on the subject of Bullying.

After Jessica Burns' attempted suicide, A film crew doing a documentary on her school, begins to focus on what made her do it and the the fingers point to Avery Keller, a popular sophomore who for some reason made Jessica her victim, the documentary then takes a look at the life of Avery Keller to see what makes her tick.

The movie pushed all the right buttons for me, I felt it was evenly laid out as we got to see what Jessica is going through which is the more favorable issue, but we also got to see where Avery was coming from. The movie does not attempt to sugar coat her villainy, but we all needed to know what was fueling the fire in order to understand it.

Not bad

I attended a Catholic school and was bullied by a gang of girls for 6 years in elementary school.. Punched, pushed, kicked in the school yard in an all nun school in the 1960's. How the nuns didn't know what was going on amazes me now at 60! I look back and call them monsters, they should be outed by everyone, end the snitch stigma related by gangsta's, and show this film in every middle and high school. No one should be tormented by these monsters daily, if you see something, say something should be the tag line in our schools! Apologies, sorry are all too late for many of us, and how we can tolerate this behavior ...just shocking!

Filmed like it was some kind of a documentary, this powerful drama is a real eye opener. A GIRL LIKE HER shows how painful, how piercing, how damaging bullying can be in this day and age where thanks to social media, the means to intimidate, threaten, and taunt somebody has increased significantly, there's about a dozen or more different ways to tell somebody to go kill themselves these days.

A GIRL LIKE HER uses today's popular hand held cam found footage style, but instead of ghosts and supernatural, it tackles the one problem that doesn't seem to want to go away from high schools everywhere, and that is bullying. You would think that after that one whole anti-bullying campaign a few years back, that our high schoolers would be in harmony, singing kumbaya with no problems anymore, but nope.

In this drama, Jessica Burns used to be best friend with Avery Keller, but like most friends, they grow up and grow apart, and one small incident causes Avery to feel resentful towards Jessica. From that point on, Avery victimizes Jessica in every possible way. But the whole high school sees Avery as a saint. And so Jessica's friend, Brian Slater helps Jessica hides a hidden digital camera that captures every evidence of Avery's harassment.

A documentary filmmaker and her crew visit South Brookdale high school to cover the story of the school's success, but they ultimately find a more pressing story in this particular ordeal when Jessica's suicide attempt shocks the entire school. What I think is powerful about A GIRL LIKE HER is that the story is all too common, meaning there is something usually the matter in the bully's home that motivates that bully to bully other people, that and the two opposing sides used to be best friends at one point in time, that is a common story in a lot of bullying cases out there, so A GIRL LIKE HER speaks to the here and now, it goes straight for the jugular, it's not one dimensional, it's not far-fetched either. And I have to give mad props to Hunter King's performance as Avery Keller, the way she tries to cover up Avery's sins, the way she tries to deny them, and the way she bullies, it doesn't get b*tchier than Hunter and she was very convincing. Why kids today still bully each other, I just don't understand, but perhaps bullying is not something that can ultimately be abolished once and for all. We have to keep constantly teach our young ones to respect and show kindness to one another and then hope that they too will teach their kids the same valuable lesson, it all starts at home.

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