I genuinely wanted to see this film. It crossed my path several times on multiple occasions, mainly just while browsing Showtime, and I thought the description sounded interesting enough. Plus, critical reception seemed overall positive, and it had some decent actors in it...I should've checked IMDB first, because my God, this film is terrible. There were times it genuinely felt like 2-3 different (and subpar) genre films mashed into one. It felt like it was one third character study, one third (cringey) erotic office place romance, and one third stalker thriller/horror, never cohesively coming into anything truly functional or fully coherent.
The plot obviously draws from very real dangers and frustrations that all types of people, especially teenage/young girls, face in their daily lives, but any potential inherent in the premise is undermined right from the start with almost immediately bizarre dialogue, uninspired direction, and characters that are terribly one dimensional and boring. It seemed like the director just thought of every cliche conversation or problem a teenage girl would discuss or experience, and attempted to jam it into his script. For example, obviously young women are going to discuss things like their periods in private, but I highly doubt it'll come out of their mouths as 'what do you eat when you bleed?' There's also very lame and surface level attempts at furthering the character development and psychology of the protagonist by vague one line references to abusive uncles and fathers that were never shown once, and that are never brought up a second time. It could've been potentially impactful and compelling to see this abuse play out, but implementing it in the form of a phrase feels incredibly lazy. It makes the cliche of the sexually irresponsible young woman from the backwards religious mother seem even more cookie cutter and wooden. It also felt like the director was trying to hit every mark imaginable, so we also have the perfect, stylish gay uncle who provides respite from the mothers religious zealotry, and the confident, assured black female friend.
The direction, as I mentioned earlier, is completely uninspired. This looks exactly like anything you'd find on the Lifetime or Hallmark channel, with extremely low production values and very standard cinematography and editing. The film has no sense of presence, mood, or theme. I think the director intended for the viewer to be unnerved and disturbed, shocked by the protagonist's delusional, declining mental state and her interactions with this insidious predator. I also think there was supposed to be some sort of mounting sense of dread that accompanied the film as it moved towards its bland conclusion. Unfortunately, we feel or get none of that. The film is so bad at establishing any kind of feeling in the viewer, I genuinely might as well have been watching the weather channel forecast I was so unengaged, so uninvolved about what was taking place, even though I was definitely meant to.
Lastly, I will say I do feel bad for the main actress. I haven't seen her in many other things, but she's clearly got some talent and potential, but it's just wasted here. I don't know what kind of direction she was getting, or if she was even getting any at all, but often times her performance didn't seem to match the film. Not that it was ever bad, but it just never seemed to mesh with the other elements. It's probably because her performance is the only thing with any texture or life in the project, so it comes across as out of place.
I genuinely think she tried to give her character some true weight and pathos, but when you have a script and director that never encourages you to dive below the surface, you're going to get a pretty lackluster character study, and that's unfortunately exactly what we ended up with. By the end of the film, I didn't know if I was meant to be dealing with a mentally ill young woman, or a ditzy, spoiled brat. I didn't know if I was meant to feel sorry for her (presumably I am,) or was supposed to feel disturbed and revolted by her and her situation.
The whole thing is just mess. Do yourself a favor and don't watch it.
