While the trailer had gotten me interested in the premise, I came out of the theater feeling a little confused.
I was the only person in the theater, which is always a pleasant experience. It also gives me less direction about how other people are interpreting what they see.
It's hard to call this a comedy, since there was one thing - possibly two - that I interpreted as being jokes.
I've had a day to sit on this, and I've come to a few realizations.
There are two scenes in this that seem like they're hitting the audience over the head with messaging. One of them is with the principal early on. The other one is a monologue near the end. The first one is more permissible, since it helps to define the lead personality, and it also gives a very sympathetic view of the principal. Once it gets combined with that ending monologue, the movie is making too hard an effort to spell out a message.
I can't brag about being "woke" or anything, but the movie assumes that the viewer has something to learn about feminism or equality or... something. If you have none of these lessons to learn, it comes across as sort of confusing.
There are a few annoyances. The direction seems far too stylized. In some cases it works, in other cases, it's too much.
It seems like some material is missing. We don't get any followup about the principal. After being kicked out of the house, where does she go?
There's a jump forward in time, and it results in things getting much worse very quickly. This works against selling the possibility of these events. Instead, certain things have to be covered in exposition, like "why isn't the government stepping in?" The bigger question is "why does this town seem to exist in a vacuum?"
Despite these failings, I still found it interesting, and it did raise tension. I still found myself worried about the fate of the characters.
Ultimately, the ending will be a dividing point for viewers. Our epilogue scene reveals the culprit (who somehow was obvious about halfway through the movie) and someone mentions that the main character survived.
How? Show, don't tell.
But I understand - this movie has too much going into it to be handled in a single feature. Three-part miniseries would serve the ideas better.
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