Just as Australians know their crime dramas and Italian know their Westerns, New Zealanders sure know their cringe comedies. Only this example is a bit different than what I’ve looked at before. Its depiction of a woman who, after a panic attack, has to miss a plane to New York… but goes to increasingly bizarre measures to try and convince everyone that she didn’t miss it, certainly fits in with that social cringe spectrum, but it’s a lot more anxious this time around. There’s a definite Safdie brothers pace to it, gradually escalating just how much worse things can get for the main character, and with its fixation on social media and social pressure, it fits in with the recent trend towards influencer thrillers.
Not that this feels entirely derivative, though, as it taps into some very genuine and unsettling moods across its run time. Watching as Millie (Ana Scotney from The Breaker Upperers) continue to dig herself in a deeper and deeper hole with her Instagram fabrications and random bouts of theft, it’s like seeing someone with impostor syndrome dealing with a world that insists on proving that self-perception to be accurate. I wrestle with that kind of self-doubt on a regular basis, so being put in front of a film that plays into that mindset was quite unsettling.
Where it gains some further muscle is in how it details Millie’s psychological profile, showing how this rather ridiculous turn of events seems almost destined, given how much she relies on mimicry just to get by in her day-to-day. Like with Sissy, it presents her actions without any direct condemnation, with an understanding that while it’s something she needs to get past, that itself will involve some hard learning on her part. The conclusion seems a bit cold in that regard, as it doesn’t give much indication that things are going to improve in any significant way from then, but the road getting there is still quite gripping.
And while I found myself engaging with this more as a social thriller, being regularly aghast and eventually horrified at what Millie subjects herself to for lack of an ability to come clean, there’s definitely some comedy cred to this. The running gag of Millie mocking up alleyways and an outdoor tent to look like she’s in New York makes for a nice deconstruction of social media subterfuge, and even takes on a bit of a meta context as, considering how many Hollywood productions have filming done both in New Zealand and over here in Australia, this is something of a regular occurrence, funnily enough. Special mention goes to Sam Cotton as Millie’s college professor, who takes Millie’s habit of moulding herself into whatever other people expect of her down a very strange direction that had me cackling.
I can’t say that, either as a Kiwi cringe comedy or as the latest in the growing collection of social media influencer horror, this is a particular favourite of mine. It runs into the problem where, in showing every character as flawed and in no position to be directly judging each other for their fuck-ups, there isn’t really a character worth rooting for here (save for maybe Rachel House in another shining role as Millie’s mother). But as a more personal examination of what embarrassment can drive people to do, and another cinematic example of why honesty is the best policy, it still works pretty well.
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