Mark Reviews Movies: NOT OKAY

Not Okay, Searchlight Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 28, 2022

At the flash-forward start of Not Okay, everybody hates Danni Sanders (Zoey Deutch). Based on the amount and volume and tone of that hatred, her crime or social sin must be extraordinary in its awfulness. It's either that or something pretty bad, amplified by the typical flare for hyperbole at which so many internet personalities excel.

The cheeky warning at the very top of writer/director Quinn Shephard's cutting satire, which gradually evolves into something much more sincere and pointed, suggests there might not be much exaggeration in those comments. The text warns of flashing lights and discussions of trauma, but it also makes a note of an "unlikeable female protagonist," which is a winking joke about how people will respond to Danni—either defensively, imagining the character somehow is a potentially sexist stand-in for women in general, or in a rejecting manner, because actual sexists have difficulty seeing women as possessing more than one or two characteristics. More to Shephard's point, though, it's just an announcement that, no, we don't have to like her protagonist and, yes, that's exactly the point.

Here's a character with a lot issues and plenty of baggage, but she's so self-centered that we start to wonder if most of her problems are of her own making. After a montage hinting at how everything will go terribly wrong for Danni, we meet her in a pre-controversy state of being.

She's miserable, even though she has a steady job as a photo editor at an online publication, where she's certain that she should be a writer instead. She has no friends, but how much of that is in the way Danni ignores, doesn't know the names of, or insults—either intentionally or some a complete absence of realizing just what she's actually saying—her co-workers? Money will probably never be an issue for her, since she's the only child of well-to-do parents, but none of what Danni has is enough for her.

She wants to be somebody—as in popular and famous and adored and admired. Is she actually depressed, needing the "happy pills" that she often ignores, or is she just spoiled and privileged and narcissistic, feeling bad that the world doesn't reflect her inflated sense of self-worth?

At a certain point here, Shephard makes it clear that the answer to that question is irrelevant. The kicker of the film's message is in picking apart and adding context to just how completely irrelevant Danni, her goals, and her feelings are in the bigger picture of what she has done, exploited, and overshadowed.

Before that, though, this story revolves around a dark and uncomfortable bit of comedic ingenuity. After failing to convince her boss to publish a woe-is-me article about her malaise, Danni decides to fake a trip to Paris and attendance at a made-up writers retreat. She also wants to impress Colin (Dylan O'Brien), a social media influencer she likes—either for his online clout or as romance potential, although the latter might only be because of the former, anyway.

To accomplish her scheme, Danni uses some digital trickery to make it seem as if she's in Paris. Waking up the morning after posting a doctored photo of her at the Arc de Triomphe, Danni finds her cellphone overwhelmed by message notifications. Just after publishing the photo, Paris had been attacked in a series of explosions—including at the monument where she allegedly was. Instead of confessing her deception, Danni decides to use the wave of sympathy for her as a means of becoming famous.

This is undeniably terrible. While Shephard's screenplay and Deutch's performance refuse to turn Danni into some kind of broad villain, they don't make excuses for her, either.

We understand Danni's naïve motive and the absence of any real comprehension of how and why what she's doing is wrong (She is haunted by visions and nightmares of a hooded figure, the suspect in the attacks, and people who actually could have been at the site, as if the only trauma she actually feels is in the inklings of a conscience). That's far removed from having any sympathy for her, though, and Shephard wisely knows the distinction of those two reactions. Meanwhile, Colin, his lifestyle, and his kind of fakery serve as a more light-hearted takedown of the shallowness of the online-fame culture of which Danni so desperately wants to be a part, and that only amplifies the offense of her deception.

The counterpart and counterpoint to Danni's story exist in Rowan (Mia Isaac). She's the survivor of a school shooting and an advocate for gun safety, whom Danni meets at a support group while trying to learn what experiencing trauma is like (Yes, she's that bad). The two become close—or as close as the bond between a teenage girl who wrongly sees an elder sister-like figure in a liar and that liar can be. Isaac is great as the film's emotional, moral, and generally authentic center, and it's through Rowan's genuine trauma and passion that Danni starts to see the obvious error of her ways.

This story seems to be heading in one direction, as Danni does discover her conscience and realizes how wrong she has been. Let's just say that Not Okay digs deeper than some routine redemption tale, as it dissects the impulse to find sympathy for wrongdoers, while overlooking or undermining those whose stories deserve and need to be told. Shephard herself appears in a self-deprecating cameo, basically acknowledging how close this film comes to doing the same thing. It doesn't, though, as the film's final spotlight shines exactly where it should.

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