If, like me, you instantly recoil at the thought of listening to teenage angst narration and/or female coming-of-age first world problem melodrama, persist with this one. The film's beginning is deliberately deceptive. It's an interesting take with a subtle darkness that's worth the time, and the mystery is back-loaded (Usual Suspects-style) into the last ten minutes. It's similar in theme to the magnificent "White Bird in a Blizzard", but sadly lacks the structure to give it the same mounting discomfort.
The main problem with the piece - and i suspect it comes from the original book, which is written as blog posts - is that it seems it would be more strongly packaged as a foreboding suspense thriller, rather than the way it's been predominantly presented as a coming-of-age drama: darker, more vicious, and more twisted. What's lack is a sense of dramatic irony - in this case, you need a foreshadowing of the tragedy that's coming to keep you hooked, but the hook only comes when you've invested all the time to watch til the end. The payoff isn't quite there. It plods, rather than builds up.
SPOILERS AHEAD - if you need the reason to persist past the first impression:
This film is about an previously-abused teenage girl who has become pregnant, and mysteriously disappears without a trace after receiving threats from confessing all the secrets of her promiscuity on an pseudo-anonymous blog. The story and characters are ultimately fantasy representations she's writing about (as she's changed the details she's put out publicly), and the real-life people are revealed at the end: all the people we see are from her imagination, and/or ours. You have a girl who has been abused taking on all the subtle narcissistic traits of youth, swimming amongst other perceived selfish companions, reflecting on the millennial preoccupation with recording everything online without considering the consequences.
The central driver of the entailing mystery seems to be cyber-bullying (from talking about planning to have an abortion publicly on her blog), but not much attention is paid to it - odd, when you consider her mysterious disappearance at the end is hung on it. Personally, i'd have thought the hardest-hitting finale would have been a reveal of the nicey-nicey sex offender boss having killed her, but it's entirely left open (it's implied she's dead, although we don't know). That would certainly have hurt to watch and been a killer twist.
The lead (Robertson) is fantastic, and carries herself incredibly well next to some serious heavyweights who are well placed.
Overall, with a stronger, layered structure and unraveling pace it could have been a real masterpiece. Not that anyone should want films to be too obvious, but in this case the "mystery" vagueness is too foggy to punch the story home with a bang. Usually you want a film to be faithful to the original book, but on this occasion, it doesn't translate well to screen without a stronger story arc for the medium: 3 acts of "observational" material doesn't give you the right impetus a twisting film plot needs.
However, it's definitely worth the time to savor what it could have been, if you can get past the idea of what you think it probably is.
The main problem with the piece - and i suspect it comes from the original book, which is written as blog posts - is that it seems it would be more strongly packaged as a foreboding suspense thriller, rather than the way it's been predominantly presented as a coming-of-age drama: darker, more vicious, and more twisted. What's lack is a sense of dramatic irony - in this case, you need a foreshadowing of the tragedy that's coming to keep you hooked, but the hook only comes when you've invested all the time to watch til the end. The payoff isn't quite there. It plods, rather than builds up.
SPOILERS AHEAD - if you need the reason to persist past the first impression:
This film is about an previously-abused teenage girl who has become pregnant, and mysteriously disappears without a trace after receiving threats from confessing all the secrets of her promiscuity on an pseudo-anonymous blog. The story and characters are ultimately fantasy representations she's writing about (as she's changed the details she's put out publicly), and the real-life people are revealed at the end: all the people we see are from her imagination, and/or ours. You have a girl who has been abused taking on all the subtle narcissistic traits of youth, swimming amongst other perceived selfish companions, reflecting on the millennial preoccupation with recording everything online without considering the consequences.
The central driver of the entailing mystery seems to be cyber-bullying (from talking about planning to have an abortion publicly on her blog), but not much attention is paid to it - odd, when you consider her mysterious disappearance at the end is hung on it. Personally, i'd have thought the hardest-hitting finale would have been a reveal of the nicey-nicey sex offender boss having killed her, but it's entirely left open (it's implied she's dead, although we don't know). That would certainly have hurt to watch and been a killer twist.
The lead (Robertson) is fantastic, and carries herself incredibly well next to some serious heavyweights who are well placed.
Overall, with a stronger, layered structure and unraveling pace it could have been a real masterpiece. Not that anyone should want films to be too obvious, but in this case the "mystery" vagueness is too foggy to punch the story home with a bang. Usually you want a film to be faithful to the original book, but on this occasion, it doesn't translate well to screen without a stronger story arc for the medium: 3 acts of "observational" material doesn't give you the right impetus a twisting film plot needs.
However, it's definitely worth the time to savor what it could have been, if you can get past the idea of what you think it probably is.