Not Okay Parent Guide

Aspiring writer and social media influencer Danni Sanders (Zoey Deutch) hasn’t reached her ambitious goals since being hired as a photo editor at online magazine Depravity. Despite submitting some articles to her editor, Danni seems unable to find a topic that isn’t either self-obsessed or tasteless. Not only can’t she get her editor’s attention, Danni can’t even catch the eye of Colin (Dylan O’Brien), a hotshot influencer with the company. So Danni develops a plan: she’ll invent a writers’ retreat in Paris, and manipulate pictures and social media to make it look like she’s spent a week relaxing in the City of Light, in hopes of leveraging the exposure into more influence at the office.

Scheming though Danni may be, even she can’t predict that midway through her “retreat”, a terrorist will detonate bombs at several major tourist spots around Paris – including the Champs-Élysées – not five minutes after she posts some doctored selfies next to the Arc de Triomphe. The outpouring of sympathy, concern, and most importantly, attention, sparks another idea: if Danni plays along and pretends to have survived the attack, she can use her “experiences” as a foundation for a writing career and celebrity based on online activism. With the unwitting help of Rowan (Mia Isaac), a high school student who survived a mass shooting, Danni sets out to make something of her life…but how long can she maintain the illusion? And what will happen when it collapses around her?

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film with a disclaimer quite like this one - it includes a pretty standard warning for flashing lights and potentially traumatic topics, and then warns viewers that the film features an “unlikeable female protagonist”. Not quite sure why they had to include “female” there, but Danni does tick all the boxes. The film’s deliberate awareness that its protagonist is, to put it mildly, an unimaginable jerk, is what keeps it on the rails.

Not Okay constantly draws attention to Danni’s rapid-fire moral failings, contrasting them with the well intentioned hard work of the people unfortunate enough to be around her. By structuring itself this way, the movie is able to maintain the tension between what Danni does and what the audience (hopefully) knows would be the right thing to do, without making Danni overly sympathetic or painting other characters as irritating goody-goodies. It also draws attention to the significance of their causes, namely online harassment and gun violence.

Intriguing story aside, this is not a movie for younger audiences. Apart from the over five dozen uses of profanity, there’s quite a bit of drinking and cannabis use, as well as a particularly unpleasant (but mercifully short lived) sex scene which occurs in the bathroom of an exclusive nightclub. There’s no actual nudity, but the sound designers make sure you know what’s going on – behaviour that soon sees our protagonist standing outside a bodega, washing down some Plan B with a Diet Coke. (Sadly, that might be the most responsible thing Danni manages to do in the entire story.) But if you can suffer through her arrogance, ignorance, and complete moral color-blindness, there’s a halfway interesting movie in here with capable production and strong opinions – even if it might be carving off more than it can handle.