Mark Reviews Movies: ZOLA

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 29, 2021

The story for Zola primarily comes from a lengthy, multi-part post on social media, which might make it the first feature-length movie—but certainly not the last—with such an origin. There's a certain novelty to co-writer/director Janicza Bravo's movie, then—and definitely a lot of curiosity to go along with it. Can a story from a social networking website, no matter how many posts it may take to tell it, really be interesting, engaging, and deep enough to justify an entire movie being made of it?

For the record, the posts came from A'Ziah "Zola" King, and there were almost 150 of them. The story went viral—enough so that it was covered by multiple news/news-like outlets, including a magazine article, with some more background information and follow-up details, by David Kushner. Bravo and Jeremy O. Harris' screenplay adapts both King's posts and Kushner's piece into an admittedly shocking and sometimes frightening movie about the underbelly of freelance stripping, some very dubious people, and the dangers of making friends too quickly, getting into a car with a bunch of strangers, and going along with a clearly suspicious situation until it's too late to get out of it.

That's the whole point, of course. On that level, there's definitely something to this movie, which creates an air of underlying and mounting dread, while also doing some clever, stylistic things inspired by the tale's origin on the internet. It's invested in the big personalities of its side players. It follows the trajectory of a really bad weekend, which only gets worse, with an air that's laid back enough that the sudden bursts of surprise or the sinister are all the more startling.

We get caught up in this story, because it's so strange, while it's simultaneously played with almost a shrug of distanced disbelief. For some, an adventure such as this one might become a source of lifelong trauma, but for Zola (Taylour Paige), we almost get a sense that this is just one of things that happens. It might have been bad in the moment, but hey, at least it's a good story to tell.

That is, perhaps, the most we get out of the eponymous character, who's almost always on screen or within the events here, but who somehow takes the backseat—literally, as she and her new acquaintances drive to Florida—to everyone and everything else in her own story. Zola narrates it all, of course, and her "Well, that happened" attitude defines the general tone of the movie.

This particular tale is all about, Zola says, a falling out she had with Stefani (Riley Keough), and our narrator also promises that it's "filled with suspense." The two meet at a restaurant where Zola works as a server, and the stranger/customer is complimenting Zola before she can even take her order. Stefani later asks Zola if she wants to hang out for the night and brings her to a strip club, where the two dance and make some fast money.

Stefani has a contact to help Zola make some more cash, if she's interested, so Zola leaves behind her boyfriend Sean (Ari'el Stachel), who isn't thrilled with the prospect, and jumps into a car with Stefani, her boyfriend, and her "roommate."

There's some subtle cleverness to the way Bravo plays with both our expectations and our, as well as Zola's, complete lack of knowledge here, such as how the quiet Derrek (Nicholas Braun) seems like the roommate type and a mysterious man known only as X (Colman Domingo) definitely seems like the boyfriend. Imagine the surprise when, upon arriving at a ratty motel in Tampa, Stefani passionately kisses Derrek. That leaves us wondering who X is and what, if clearly not a roommate, his connection to Stefani could possibly be.

We learn that, if not the man's real name, eventually, and the whole affair goes from stripping for only a little cash, to Stefani taking some photos with Zola for social media (or, at least, that's what she says), to a much fancier hotel, and to Zola helping Stefani make more money with strange men than she ever has in the past. Somewhere in the middle of all this, a narrating Zola forewarns us to "watch every move" Stefani makes, and that's when we know there's nothing but trouble ahead.

Most of this is straightforward, although a few gimmicky details (the time appearing on screen, just like it does on a cellphone, and characters reading their text message—complete with emoji—aloud) give us a sense of how defined by technology these characters are. The performances, too, are quite strong, with Braun generating an attitude of the tragically pathetic and Domingo chewing into the role of the mercurial X.

Keough is the standout as the seemingly amiable and vulnerable but wholly manipulative Stefani (A particularly funny gag stops the movie in its tracks—and restarts it from the top—so that she can tell a very questionable version of the story from her perspective). While Zola feels a bit too pushed into the background, Paige's focused performance provides some energy in how intensely she observes everything and everyone surrounding her.

There simply isn't much beneath the weird story of Zola. It's a novelty, for sure, but beyond the movie's origin, there's not much unique about it.

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