Not Okay

Not Okay ends up somewhere in a valley between satire and character study. It's not sharp enough to be the former and not realistic enough to be the latter.

Danni does learn from Rowan. She learns that survivor stories come with real stakes, and that there are real people on the other end of hashtags like the one she and Rowan invent, #IAmNotOkay. (There's also an under-explored aspect to the script here about stealing other people's pain, as Danni does to Rowan.) Social media has a habit of dehumanizing people, and it’s nice to get a reminder of that fact in the Insta-Era. But I kept wanting “Not Okay” to be willing to live up to that opening salvo in a way that makes viewers truly uncomfortable. It’s not sharp enough to be the former and not realistic enough to be the latter. There are a lot of claims in “Not Okay” that Danni is unlikable and won’t get a redemption arc, but the script constantly pushes back against the potential for a truly dark satire because it’s almost too empathetic to Danni’s cause. She stumbles through a conversation with her crush Colin (a pretty bland Dylan O’Brien), a co-worker who walks in a constant vape cloud, that ends with her saying she’s going to France. She’s not and can’t afford it. The latest from the director of “ Blame” seeks to explore how social media embraces and even warps survivor stories through the tale of Danni Sanders ( Zoey Deutch), an Insta-Wannabe who digs herself into a deep hole of lies regarding an international tragedy. “Not Okay” jumps back two months to re-introduce Danni as a photo editor at an online mag called Depravity—a clever name for a site I would totally read.

Deutch has mastered the "unlikable female protagonist," giving a delightfully unhinged performance in Quinn Shephard's internet fame satire.

“But the problem with this apology is it was never going to be for Rowan, it was going to be for Danni,” Deutch said. Danni Sanders is a fascinating character,” Deutch said in a recent interview with IndieWire. “I was really excited that Quinn wanted to invite me in to the process of producing it alongside her and being her partner in crime.” Though it still doesn’t contain the word “sorry,” she comes prepared with an apology on her phone. Initially, Danni’s scheme is inspired by her desire to interest Dylan O’Brien’s influencer Colin, but when Paris is the site of a tragic terrorist attack, Danni feels forced to pretend as if she was there, she survived it, and she’s got plenty to say about it. The “Set It Up” star was immediately impressed with Shephard’s script, which offered her a new twist on the kind of “fascinating character” she loves to play. As Shephard told IndieWire, Deutch was always her first choice for the part, and she was extremely impressed by Deutch’s desire to get honest with such a prickly character.

The burning desire for fame, and the way people seize upon "causes" often without doing their due diligence, give a meaty foundation to "Not Okay," a dark ...

Shephard breaks the story into chapters, which helps with the pacing of a relatively slim story. But when a terrorist attack happens there, people instantly want to know if she's alright, and instead of coming clean, she spins an increasingly fabulous tale about what she experienced and witnessed, winning new social-media followers and attention from her peers, including the handsome Colin (Dylan O'Brien). Heck, even her mother (Embeth Davidtz) is suddenly nicer. ), an aspiring writer not being taken very seriously at the magazine where she works.

"Not Okay" with Zoey Deutch hits Hulu, HBO Max has animated VRChat documentary "We Met in Virtual Reality" and more movies to watch at home.

Canfield also introduces themes related to the American frontiersmen’s cruel treatment of the natives — a note of seriousness that, while admirable, conflicts with the film’s overall tone. “Neptune Frost” is unlike any other movie released this year: a gender-bending science-fiction musical set among a band of revolutionary hackers living in a Rwandan village surrounded by electronic waste. The Australian survival thriller “The Reef: Stalked” isn’t a sequel to writer-director Andrew Traucki’s acclaimed 2010 film “The Reef” so much as it’s a new iteration of the same story. The shark’s prey this time are all women: a band of skilled snorkelers that includes two sisters still recovering from a sibling’s recent murder. It’s reassuring in a way to know that even an online utopia is imperfect, and that in the end it only succeeds because of the goodwill and bright ideas of the people who gather there. To her credit, Webster doesn’t shy away from the sex part of this sex comedy. Sally Phillips gives a winning performance as Gina, a 50-year-old who loses her job, then takes advantage of an awkward encounter with a friendly stripper named Tom (Alexander England) to start her own business: hiring out hunky guys to clean houses and, if asked, to provide sexual services. For all the reasonable anxiety we may have about whether we’re spending too much time online, it’d be wrong to deny that many people rely on the virtual world for a sense of community, a creative outlet and a way to safely explore other cultures and alternate identities. Instead, Hunting just roams openly and curiously through brightly colored fantastical realms, meeting some of the sexy human-animal hybrids and whimsically goofy creatures who have found little corners of VRChat where they can go on dates, have outings with friends, take classes … really, do whatever people do in the outside world but with far fewer physical or logistical limitations. But “Not Okay” hits surprisingly hard with its ending, reframing a lot of the preceding 90 minutes from a different and harsher perspective. These shifts in the film between earnestness and anything-for-a-laugh comedy sometimes feel off, allowing the audience to excuse the characters’ bad behavior as silly, not reckless. Zoey Deutch plays Danni Sanders, an aspiring journalist tired of being overlooked by the much cooler colleagues and editors at the New York-based website where she works.

Review By: Jonathan W. Hickman. Film Details: Director: Quinn Shephard. Cast Zoey Deutch, Mia Isaac, Dylan O'Brien, and Karan Soni.

It’s uncomfortable but entertaining to watch Danni get deeper and deeper into her catfish-like social media existence. After unsuccessfully pitching a story to the website where she works, photo editor Danni (Zoey Deutch) decides to take a fake vacation to Paris. Using her expert Photoshop skills, Danni posts a series of convincing photos to social media platforms chronicling her adventure. And if you don’t have a seminal monumental event, it’s easy to create one out of thin air.

Zoey Deutch and Dylan O'Brien star in the comedic drama, which arrived on Hulu on July 29.

Not Okay is streaming exclusively on Hulu, at no additional cost to subscribers. Subscriptions start at just $6.99 a month (or $69.99 a year) after a free 30-day trial. Interested in live television? Of course, it’s only a matter of time until the entire façade falls apart and her lie gets exposed. Deutch portrays Danni, a photo editor/aspiring writer who doesn’t have any friends and can’t even get a lunch date with her mom. All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors.

Director/writer Quinn Shephard (Blame) tackles themes of privilege and adopted trauma in Hulu Original movie Not Okay. The film stars Zoey Deutch as Danni ...

“Danni is intentionally both terrible and very relatable,” Shepherd said in an interview with Newsweek. “I think especially for young white women on the internet.” Danni becomes close with the young activist, at first because of her fame, but soon comes to see Rowan as her little sister and best friend. With her story exposed, Danni Sanders becomes the most hated woman on the internet. Not Okay ends with Danni attending one of Rowan’s spoken word performances, intending to apologize. It’s Harper who sees Danni for the fake she is. With Danni’s new celebrity status, however, she has had to defer to her judgment at work. Danni becomes deeply involved with Rowan’s cause to reduce gun violence, but she isn’t self-aware or compassionate enough to see how she’s stealing from her new friend. She shares with her followers that she survived the attack and is safe. Danni creates a fake website for the writers’ retreat, photoshops pictures of herself in Paris, and posts them to Instagram with cutesy sayings about baguettes. She finds a workaround, however, in joining a support group for survivors of shootings and bombings. Through co-opting the trauma of others and pretending to be a bombing survivor, Danni soon gets a taste of the fame and followers she’s always wanted. She adopts a friend in school shooting survivor, Rowan (Mia Isaac) to make her own ‘survivor story’ seem more credible.

This week, Not Okay, the satirical dark comedy starring Zoey Deutch as a fame-hungry influencer faking her way through a terrorist attack, premieres on Hulu ...

She’s tasked with helping out his business with the help of a charming lawyer. The young adult romance Purple Hearts stars Sofia Carson and Nicholas Galitzine as Cassie and Luke, a struggling songwriter and a troubled Marine who agree to marry each other for the sake of military benefits. Discovering his latent talent as a barber, Richardsson raises money in a last ditch effort to save the salon. brand-new? Here’s a shark movie about four young women on a kayaking trip who — you guessed it — are pursued by a shark. Bergholm tells Polygon that she literally Googled the world’s best specialist in movie animatronics, then reached out to him about working on the film. Zoey Deutch (Vampire Academy) stars in the satirical black comedy Not Okay as Danni, a misguided influencer who fakes a trip to Paris in order to boost her clout.

Writer-director Quinn Shephard explains the movies, influencers, and fashion that inspired her Hulu comedy 'Not Okay,' about an Instagram scammer played by ...

I think you're drawn to the films that reflect the way that you process things in the world, and I try my best to process darkness with humor. That being said, a lot of the best examples of satire filmmaking with unlikable protagonists have been men, just because I think there's a real fear around financing and distributing films like this with women at the center. I think you're drawn to the films that reflect the way that you process things in the world, and I try my best to process darkness with humor. I think you're drawn to the films that reflect the way that you process things in the world, and I try my best to process darkness with humor. But Do the Right Thing was a big reference for me, and Network, which is an older film, but has a lot of social commentary in it. It's funny that some critics are saying that it's almost a modern-day horror movie, because I wanted there to be a lot of tension and a lot of visual humor. But Do the Right Thing was a big reference for me, and Network, which is an older film, but has a lot of social commentary in it. As for modern films, I love stuff like Sorry to Bother You, Blindspotting, and The Square, which is a Norwegian film that is one of the best social satires. I think you're drawn to the films that reflect the way that you process things in the world, and I try my best to process darkness with humor. That being said, a lot of the best examples of satire filmmaking with unlikable protagonists have been men, just because I think there's a real fear around financing and distributing films like this with women at the center. That being said, a lot of the best examples of satire filmmaking with unlikable protagonists have been men, just because I think there's a real fear around financing and distributing films like this with women at the center. I really was like, \"I have to immerse myself!\" I spent a lot of time on TikTok. I followed all the Instagram cool girls on this one account so that I could keep sending my costume designer photos and microtrends.

'Not Okay,' Quinn Shephard's new movie starring Zoey Deutch and Dylan O'Brien, features influencer-scammer Caroline Calloway in the jump-scare-slash-cameo ...

“I wrote the first draft of the script in 2018, which was peak summer of scam, and I had her in mind as somebody who could do a cameo in the online-cancellation-support-group scene,” writer and director Quinn Shephard said at the movie’s July 28 premiere. When it came to writing her lines in Not Okay, they “collaborated a little bit.” “I definitely went in with some jokes prepared, and we kind of hashed out what she was comfortable saying in terms of self-satire,” Shephard added. These days, Calloway is somewhat offline, but she’s allegedly writing a “very real book,” according to her Instagram bio.

'Not Okay movie fails to impress and can be termed a terrible social media satire. The writer-director Quinn Shephard's portrayal is not quite biting and ...

Rowan fights for a change since she survived a school shootout. Parisfor a writer's retreat. Hulu, seems to be a terrible social media satire. It is also what the film felt like. Danni tries very hard to make people like her, which is quite evident from her persona. Quinn Shephardis the writer-director of the film.

Shephard dreamed of a scene with all sorts of internet-famous scammers, but she got lucky with a big name willing to play herself.

“It was always an idea to have Caroline in it, because right when I was writing the story, it was about to be the summer of scam,” Shephard said. It’s pretty horrible to be a woman who the entire internet piles on and rips apart for making some mistakes. Shephard soon met with Calloway for a revealing evening in which they discussed Calloway’s experience, how it’s reflected in Shephard’s film, and the general ickiness of internet culture. “We got drunk and talked about the internet. “The idea initially was that the support group was full of people who had gotten online shamed and canceled,” Shephard told IndieWire during a recent interview. Although not as well known as scammer brethren like Anna Delvey, Elizabeth Holmes, or Martin Shrekli, Calloway is infamous to a certain class of the very online who are also the kind of people who will enjoy Shephard’s (very smart) film.

Zoey Deutch stars as Danni, a writer who becomes an influencer by photoshopping herself in Paris while remaining in New York City. While this façade begins as ...

We [did] a lot of improv; I think there was a rawness to that scene because I wanted the girls to be talking over each other and overlapping and for it to feel very broad, almost like no one could finish a sentence because it was like they were failing to communicate and Danni was failing to listen. She was 17 when we shot this and it was her second role and she’s one of the kindest, most generous people in addition to being so unbelievably talented. BTL: There’s one scene I have to ask you about — I won’t name the characters for the sake of people who haven’t seen the film yet — but there’s a confrontation between two characters in an office space. It’s still this movie and it’s pretty clearly not on her side,’ but as soon as we put the warning on the film, it completely shifted the kind of feedback so far to the other side that if anything, people were then saying ‘I thought she was going to be so unlikeable, but like I kind of sympathized with her a little.’ It was really interesting how much one tiny acknowledgment of it changed the audience’s perception. And it was a consistent note that we got of people genuinely being like, ‘I don’t even know if I can say I like the film because they don’t know how they’re supposed to feel. There’s been a lot of male-driven satire for a long time and a genuine piece of feedback that we repeatedly got on the movie was that people were kind of like “Why would you put someone like Danni at the center of a film? You have enough to do as a director without also having to worry about acting, and I wanted to be so elaborate and detail-oriented in the way that this was shot and the look of the film and just finessing all [of] the performances and working really hands-on with everyone, so I’m happy that it fell that way. It was something that we were always going to do a content warning for the film — not necessarily a satirical one — because there are a lot of themes of trauma in the movie and we wanted to acknowledge [that]. After our first test screening, we started to notice how much people struggled for the same reason we were talking about. In terms of more modern films, it [Not Okay] was really inspired by everything from Sorry to Bother You to The Square, and a lot of really clever and innovative uses of the genre. I imagine you had a lot of conversations with her, but did you warn her that she might be playing the literal worst person in the world? So it was great that we were all seeing the same vision and could be really collaborative. She’s really funny, but she’s also relatable and she’s great at drama and I just felt like her range really covered everything I was looking for in Danni.