Actor or actress turned writer-director Quinn Shephard was hardly in her twenties when her debut feature, “Blame, inch played the festival circuit in 2017, and possesses a solid understand of her market cohort, from emotions of aimlessness to a selfie-stick-driven view from the world.
Enter Danni (Zoey Deutsch of “The Politician” ), a good aspiring writer not really being taken extremely seriously at the magazine where she functions. “You just get up every day thinking, ‘I want to be seen, ‘” a teary-eyed Danni muses at the outset, prior to foreshadowing what’s ahead by saying, “Be careful what you f—ing wish for. ”
Flash back again two months, and Danni stumbles upon the thought of faking a trip in order to Paris thanks to the miracles of photoshop to be able to impress people. But when a terrorist attack happens there, individuals instantly want to know when she’s alright, and instead of coming clean, she spins an increasingly fabulous tale about what she experienced plus witnessed, winning new social-media followers and attention from the girl peers, including the attractive Colin (Dylan O’Brien). Heck, even her mother (Embeth Davidtz) is suddenly nicer.
Most severe of all, Danni doubles down on the deceptiveness by befriending the survivor of a school-shooting incident turned activist (Mia Isaac), at first to learn something about how exactly to express the fake trauma that the girl didn’t actually withstand, but later a sense of actual kinship.
Danni parlays that link into a public profile, making a speech by which she announces, “I am not alright, ” which basically captures the seductiveness of a catchphrase lifestyle that’s fast to exalt new faces and just as desperate to tear them down.
However like everything else in her life, she doesn’t put in enough effort to have a lot hope of sustaining the ruse — an unlikable high quality that Deutsch conveys quite well — which usually only heightens the unease about security damage.
Shephard breaks the story into chapters, which helps with the pacing of a relatively slim story. “Not Okay” isn’t the kind of film that’s going to amass a huge audience (hence its debut via Hulu), but it is one of those of-the-moment ideas which makes you take inventory of where we have been, and the manipulation that may play into exactly who commands the spotlight.
Not only is that not always alright, but it’s a reminder, as Danni states, to be careful everything you wish for.
“Not Okay” premieres July 29 on Hulu. It’s rated R.