Stars: 4.5/5 ⭐️I'd say this movie is one of the closest that captures internet culture in a sharp savage way. Following Danni Sanders, played by Zoey Deutch, she, to get this guy Colin, played by Dylan O'Brien, attention, she fakes going to Paris for a writers retreat, especially since she wants become a writer. However then there is a bombing in Paris, and so her parents are super horrified and are scared for her, and so she fakes going to Paris for her parents, but then it gets worse, when she joins them at the airport, cause she's going to fake that too, there's a photographer, and they get all these photos of her, and then she sees and makes sure that her face is seen. Then from there, those photos become famous, and she becomes famous by association, after saying that that was her, but now she must continue her faking a terrorist attack, and the way she does that is she goes to group therapy, where she meets Rowan, played by Mia Issac, who is a gun violence activist, who has about 600k followers on Instagram, so Danni latches to her, although it's kinda weird, since Danni is like maybe 25 or something, and Rowan is 17, still in high school. So, throughout the movie, Danni gets closer and closer with Rowan, but there's someone out to get Danni, Harper, played by Nadia Alexander, who's picking up on all these clues about Danni, and it's not really a spoiler, but by the end, Danni is exposed, and we see that in the opening scene, and the movie is about how we got there. So, one of the things that I loved about this movie was the dated, and current mix of pop culture. Danni wears chunky rings, has like a candy bracelet thing for her iPhone, and does the hand over her head, kinda, I'm embarrassing thing. You know what I'm talking about right? And she also does the shy tapping two fingers thing, which is just so cringy, but it works here. Especially since it's mixed with talking about TikTok, and the importance of proper social media activism, because it makes it feel current, and Danni is just behind on the trend. Also, there are a good amount of real influencers in this, like BestDressed, Smokey Glow, and Reece aka Guy with a Camera, and I guess he also actually worked on this film, so props to him. This film also gets into a lot of topics, and one of the main ones is privilege, white feminism, and how people will do anything to seem a victim, even faking being in a terrorist attack, which is followed by a subtle examination of privilege, of how nobody fact-checked her, as she was a white woman in distress. It also deals with how two-faced the internet is because as she gets more and more famous, people are praising her, and getting on her side, and stuff, but as soon as she falls, she's ripped apart. She's doxxed, everyone says that she's the fakest person alive, which they're not wrong about, but they also send death threats, showing no ounce of remorse, which she might not deserve redemption, but the remorselessness of the internet is more telling of the others than her. But what I love most about it, is how it deals with trauma, which is amazing, while also kinda critiquing it, all in the #IAmNotOkay trend that happens in the movie, where it seems to be calling out fake wokiness around mental health, but also showing how people who are actually going through it have multifaceted struggles with it, especially seen in Rowan as she has a trauma trigger, as someone messes with her, and she seems to have a PTSD induced panic attack and then talks about how people will rip her to shreds for that. This is where we see the first time we see an uncurated response from Danni, and it seems like what she's gotten herself into is bigger than she realized. And the way that the main character navigates as well, where from the onset you aren't supposed to like her, because she's faking being in a terrorist attack, but the way that the movie moves, she's the hero in a sense, or at the protagonist, and Harper, the one who's going to expose her is the villain, which I thought was an interesting way of how we can be disillusioned in our own reality. So, to conclude, Not Okay I think is a great film about mental health, internet culture, and how sometimes, some people don't deserve a reception arc for their actions.
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AuthorRyan Jones is an aspiring screenwriting, and an environmental enthusiast and activist. Archives
February 2022
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