R | 1h 30m | 1.20.2023
Director: Mary Nighy
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Cast: Anna Kendrick, Kaniehtiio Horn, Wunmi Mosaku, Charlie Carrick
Ryan’s Score: 72/100
Rotten Tomatoes: 43% Audience, 83% Critic (as of 2.5.2023)
Watch the trailer here:
Anna Kendrick is probably best known for her role as Beca in the Pitch Perfect franchise; a shy, somewhat unassuming college student who ends up leading an a capella team to glory. Kendrick’s performance as Alice, on the other hand, is the antithesis of Beca. Alice is consumed by an eating disorder, anxiety attacks, and relentlessly intrusive thoughts, all fueled by her emotionally abusive boyfriend, Simon (Charlie Carrick). On the surface, their relationship seems normal enough. Simon appears to fawn over Alice, constantly telling her she’s beautiful and that he loves her. But from the first shot, it’s clear that something isn’t right. Alice habitually strangles her fingers with strands of hair and yanks it out in clumps. While getting drinks with her lifelong best friends, Tess (Kaniehtiio Horn) and Sophie (Wunmi Mosaku), Sophie invites Alice to her family’s cabin for a week-long vacation to celebrate Tess’s 30th birthday. Reluctantly, Alice agrees to go and tells Simon she’ll be away on a work trip.
The movie is boring, but Kendrick’s performance is incredible. Her anxiety as Alice is visceral. In every shot, her entire body is tense. Her facial expressions display perfectly what the character is feeling, especially in moments of silence. Somehow it feels like the perfect character for Kendrick to play. She utilizes her smaller frame to express how trapped she is by shrinking even smaller, especially in shots with Carrick who stands a full foot over her. We see Simon physically loom so large above Alice, but what Kendrick does so well is portray how large he also mentally looms over her. She constantly tells herself that Simon won’t love her if she eats certain foods, wears her hair a certain way, or even thinks certain thoughts.
While at the cabin, Tess and Sophie try to get Alice to talk about her relationship and her feelings. It’s clear that before Simon, Alice was a vastly different friend. The constant texts from Simon either asking for a risque picture or telling Alice how much he misses her just adds to her mental strain. Once Tess hides her phone, Alice finally starts to open up a bit. She tells Tess and Sophie about some of the thoughts she has. That Simon won’t love her if she isn’t perfect. That she’s “bad” and he’ll know if she even thinks “bad” things. No matter what she does, Simon’s frequent passive-aggressive comments surface in her mind. Alice recalls how he hates chips and will tell her the saturated fat content will kill her.
Aside from Kendrick’s gripping performance as Alice, the movie was incredibly dull. At 90 minutes, it’s one of the shortest films I’ve seen in a while. But it didn’t feel that way. It seemed to drag on with repetitive interactions between Alice, Tess, and Sophie. The friends would try to get Alice to talk about what is making her so anxious, but she would deflect, then they’d do it all over again. Progress is slowly made, and eventually, Alice opens up and allows her friends to help break her free of the shackles in her mind. But to me, Alice didn’t earn her progress as much as the movie made it out to be. Had this been a 25-minute short film, I think I would have really enjoyed the arc. Instead, it was the longest hour and a half I’ve had in a movie theater.