Danni Sanders, the protagonist visibly in need of Not good, has goals, but doesn’t really understand the work they require. They’re more like impatient expectations set versus the warp speed of texting. His burning aspiration is to be a writer – meaning someone who is famous and has a lot of followers – a goal that turns into reality as a result of a bit of greedy fake social media of attention that she combines with heinous lies. But as horrible as she is, she’s also sweet; without pushing or insisting that we like it, Zoey Deutschan actor with many comic chops and charisma, finds vulnerability under Danni’s bluster. And so even though we know, in the opening moments of the film, that she’s headed for a downfall, the film percolates with the fear that this is the redemption story of someone who might be the child of the poster for white privilege and Gen Z self-absorption.
It’s a friction that writer-director Quinn Shephard addresses with ironic candor in the feature’s home stretch, via an on-screen title and his own cameo. Whether she redeems her main character is open to interpretation, but she certainly intends to ensure the redemption of her film, which opens with the tongue-in-cheek warning that it “contains flashing lights, themes of trauma and an unlikable female protagonist” – a warning about our biases and presumptions as much as Danni’s.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Shephard, still in her twenties, understands the world of American youth, cultural tropes and personality types, THC and Lexapro, dopamine hits delivered via smartphone notification ping. With Not goodit takes a broader view than its youth-focused debut, Blame: A school shooting is a crucial background element to the story, and a late-night drugstore run for Plan B is effortlessly integrated into the action. It’s not about the finger-on-the-pulse insight of the dark comedy, which premieres July 29 on Hulu, but it’s shallower than it would like, more confusing than punchy. The tone oscillates between broad sweeps, sharp zings and character insight, the satire less sustained than striking in bursts.
Shepard’s reach might exceed her reach, but there’s no doubt that she takes risks and is an up-and-coming filmmaker. She also has an eye for talent, as she proved with the exceptionally good cast. Blame (one of whose stars, Nadia Alexander, has a key supporting role here). At the center of the helmsman’s second outing, the newcomer Mia Isaac inflames the screen with grief and anger, a fiery counterbalance to Deutch’s flimsy suitor, and a far more emotionally effective role for Isaac than his turn in the recently released dud Don’t make me go.
Deutch’s Danni and Isaac’s Rowan meet at a support group for people who have been directly affected by the violence – the crucial difference between them being that Rowan’s experience, a mass shooting at his school, was real , while Danni’s proximity to a terrorist attack is the fictional stuff. She is a photo editor in a media Depravity, vying for attention in its hyper-colored open space plan, which, like most of these barrier gestures, adheres to a hierarchy where private offices are coveted. (Jason Singleton’s lively production design also includes the exuberant clutter of Danni’s apartment, an expressive contrast to the composed symmetry of his parents’ well-appointed place.)
At work, and seemingly everywhere else, Danni is friendless. She’s also a snob, ignoring the friendly chatter of fellow non-entity Kelvin (Karan Soni), her gaze fixed on Depravityrising star journalist Harper (Alexander, playing a very different register from that of Blame) and influencer Colin (a freakishly funny Dylan O’Brien), who moves across the world in a cloud of vaping smoke like a weed-boi spin on Pigpen from Charlie Brown. The technical paper Danni presents to her editor (Negin Farsad), titled “Why am I so sad?”, notes that she “missed” the generational trauma of 9/11 because she was on vacation with her family. . It doesn’t do the trick to elevate her to the ranks of society writers. But she turns into one anyway, desperate to impress Colin and finding that his mention of a made-up trip to Paris for a writers retreat catches her eye.
Putting her Photoshop skills to work, she’s also grabbing the attention of more followers than she’s ever known with her beret and baguette-adorned posts from her fake visit to the City of Light, most of them taken in her unchic neighborhood of Bushwick. Danni’s moment of glory under the social media sun meets a major problem when terrorist attacks devastate Paris. But instead of nipping the lie in the bud, she continues to milk it.
And why not, when his mother normally restrained (Embeth Davidtz) rushes in with massage date gifts and cups of cocoa and her dad (Brennan Brown), a one-note joke from a tearful mess, delivers wads of cash. The Queer Bowling team at work, led by Harper and Larson (Dash Perry), reverse their position on annoying straight girl Danni and invite her to join. Better still, her once dismissive boss is now an admiring supporter, “honoured” to publish Danni’s essays on her experience as a survivor.
In order to increase the authenticity of his writing – and to collect buzzwords about trauma – Danni attends a community center support group, led by the warm and friendly Linda (Tia Dionne Hodge). Here, as at work, she ignores serious people, including Charles (Kirk White), who survived the attack at Ariana Grande’s Manchester concert in 2017. Instead, she turns to the person with a important online follower, Isaac’s Rowan.
A high school girl who has become a gun safety activist since surviving a classroom shooting, Rowan injects a grounded energy into the film, not just with her courageous struggle or searing spoken word poetry, but with the how she listens, connects and encourages Danni to feel her own pain. In no time, Danni has redirected their conversations and co-opted Rowan’s sage advice into a first-person article that proves a hit for Depravity and goes on a hashtag frenzy. As manifestos go, #IAmNotOkay is vague enough to tap into real pain even though it’s built on fraud, vague enough to feel incisive yet still another iteration of narcissism.
Such contradictions fuel and hinder the film in various ways. As delightfully sharp as its research into internet culture is – one particularly strong sequence delves into a publicist-focused “event” built around photoshoots, brands and breathless babble about “collabs” – the presence of real celebrities internet in Not good points out that this is not a takedown, but rather a sweet love-hate letter from a reviewer.
Aside from Rowan, Linda, and the other members of the support group, everyone is something of a poser, seeking recognition. Even as she uses Rowan, Danni comes to care for her, taking on the role of surrogate big sister with genuine admiration for the young girl – flutters of deep feeling that Deutch never exaggerates. Yet, however much guilt Danni feels about her deception, she’s too involved to think about what she’s doing to Rowan, until she’s forced to. This guilt is manifest in the image of the suspected terrorist of Paris: a lone wolf in a hoodie, a practical narrative device that is also murky, depoliticized and unbelievable. On the other hand, when the watchful and wary Harper reminds Danni that “people have died” in the attacks, Shephard, to her credit, subtly underscores the runaway, superficial Insta-packed emotion of that statement.
The stacks of books in Danni’s apartment suggest that his interest in writing is real, or was at some point in his young life before being overshadowed by a thirst for attention. As in 2017 feature Flower, Deutch can give a gruesome character a gravity-defying charm. In Danni, she creates someone ridiculous but teachable. Shephard, winking most of the time, wisely cuts the sap potential, reminding us at every opportunity of Danni’s ignorance. At the same time, it exposes the disproportionate, probably hypocritical opprobrium, of which its protagonist is ultimately the object. But the moment when the mic drops that ends the story’s back-and-forth pushes the woman at its center to the fringes — a move perhaps as seamless as any of Danni’s but satisfying nonetheless.
The best of The Hollywood Reporter
Comments are closed.