PARACHUTE - Mark Reviews Movies

Parachute, Vertical

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 4, 2024

Recovery is a process. Riley (Courtney Eaton), the protagonist of Parachute, has gone to rehab, is going through the steps of a support group, sees a therapist with some regularity, and is trying to get back into having a "normal" life. Her addiction isn't alcohol or drugs, though. She is obsessed with how her body looks, and when she's convinced her physical appearance isn't what she believes it should be, Riley eats as a form of self-punishment.

There's a lot more going on with this character than just that, which is one of the admirable elements of Becca Gleason and director Brittany Snow's screenplay. Riley isn't wholly defined by her mental health issues here, as she's also dealing with romantic strife, the problems of trying to have a "normal" life while also adhering to the guidelines of the recovery program, and how to find some purpose amidst all of this. She's a fairly rich character, especially when the movie itself takes a hard look at how much the obstacles within her recovery have to do with herself. Riley may be going through the process, but she hasn't accepted the foundation of it.

The story of this movie, though, quickly becomes a cycle of self-inflicted pain and misery. Yes, that's mostly the point Gleason and Snow are getting at with this material, but that doesn't make it any less one-note and repetitive. Riley keeps sabotaging herself, her recovery, her friendships, her romantic relationships, and any chance that she might be able to move forward from everything that got her here in the first place. When a character eventually offers her some tough love about all of this, it's refreshing—not only because we definitely understand the thinking at that point, but also because it seems as if the narrative has given itself permission to finally move forward, too.

We first meet Riley sitting outside of the rehab facility, waiting for a ride that isn't coming. She stares at photos on social media—first, of a man who turns out to be her ex-boyfriend with his new romantic partner and, then, of various women posing and modeling. This is Riley's pattern. Something goes wrong or reminds her of something that has gone wrong, and she immediately thinks it has something to do with her—specifically the way she looks.

It's a false belief, of course, like so many that come from whatever underlying mental health condition is affecting Riley, but she's too caught up in those flashes of self-hatred to consider the possibility. We feel for her, even if the screenplay avoids offering any kind of official diagnosis to help us understand what's happening with her. Eaton's performance, which is somehow charming in the character's self-aware awkwardness at her best moments and achingly vulnerable in Riley's worst ones, goes a long way to ensuring that.

The way Snow incorporates visual cues to show how Riley's mind is working is effective, too. There are flashbacks, of course, to how Riley holds on to her past with the ex and how that relationship came to an end, but when the character is feeling insecure about her body, Snow gives us flashes of Riley staring at parts of other women's bodies. They're brief and cut quickly, like rhythmic stabs of self-doubt.

Most of the story revolves around Riley's relationship with Ethan (Thomas Mann), a man she meets at a bar while out with her best friend Casey (Francesca Reale), who picked her up from the facility when Riley's mother never showed. Riley and Ethan talk, joke, and commiserate about their lives and assorted problems, and he's especially understanding when she points out that the recovery program strongly recommends not starting a romantic relationship during the first year of participating.

The two become the closest of friends instead, and in between Riley's flashes of inner torment and how she responds to them (drawing circles around parts of her body, slapping them, and being tempted by all the leftovers in the fridge), the movie subtly examines—perhaps too much so—how the two have developed a potentially unhealthy co-dependent bond. Riley needs him to feel better about herself, because he's clearly in love with her, and Ethan needs to help her, because that's his pattern. It stems from his relationship with his alcoholic father, played by Joel McHale, who's one of the few more-recognizable faces in smaller roles, with the others being Dave Baustista as Riley's boss at a murder mystery dinner theater and Gina Rodriguez as her therapist.

It's a fascinating, believable, and troubling dynamic, even if the story is so busy with showing Riley's repeated slides into her self-loathing ways of thinking and the resulting behavior that the relationship basically comes down to the question of whether or not the two will end up together. Beneath that, though, there's definitely something insightful here, but it's hindered by the repetitious nature of where the screenplay ultimately keeps its focus.

That's on Riley and, more specifically, her cycle of insecurity and self-punishment. It's too bad Parachute reduces this character's story to that element, especially with the complexities of the recovery process right there to explore more fully. There's also something that feels a bit dishonest in how the story arrives at its final, more optimistic tone, by way of a string of scenes of high drama that don't quite fit with the reserved approach before them.

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