‘Oh, Hi!' Review – Molly Gordon & Logan Lerman Riff ‘Misery' In Cute But Contrived Comedy

Geek Vibes Nation

a day ago

The problem with a movie like Sophie Brooks' Oh, Hi!, which will screen on Friday, June 13, at the Tribeca Film Festival, is that its flaws are precisely what make it interesting. It's opening moments tell us everything we'll ever need to know – a girl (Iris, played by Molly Gordon) has done something bad to a guy (Isaac, Logan Lerman), and needs help dealing with the consequences, she tells a friend over the phone – yet 93 minutes of a feature film are due to follow. Sure, we're eager to learn the details of this foreshadowed deed, but we already know something is bound to go wrong, and thus spend the entire film attempting to piece the mystery together for ourselves. What happened between Iris and Isaac that led to this desperate, panicked phone call? Where is Isaac now? Better yet, is he alive? How soon will we begin to notice the signs that lead us toward the twist that the film has already promised us? And, once we get there, will the tease have been worth it?
If you've seen 1990's Misery, and if you have any bit of experience as an amateur cinematic sleuth, the trail of breadcrumbs won't be all that difficult to track. It's not that Brooks' sophomore feature is entirely devoid of originality, nor that it's lacking in fun or watchability. The latter two certainly apply more to Oh, Hi! than the idea of novelty, but as T.S. Eliot famously said, 'Good writers borrow, great writers steal.' This isn't to suggest that Brooks' film is a plagiaristic exercise in revamping the tale that made Kathy Bates at least somewhat synonymous with the ax-wielding crazy type, but that Oh, Hi!'s writer-director is so keen to show the hand of the works that inspired her that her own creation feels like a retread on principle. By teasing the fact that chaos is coming, especially before her opening credits have rolled, Brooks displays a fundamental lack of trust in her prospective audience that renders the remainder of her could've-been exhilarating ride a predictable wash that happens to star a slew of charismatic young actors. One only wishes she had let them show us what they were capable of in a more linear fashion.
With that in mind, let's start at the beginning for those who remain interested: Iris and Isaac have been seeing each other for a little while now, to the point where both of their moms know the other by name and their individual friends have met their S.O.s at least once. We're at the point in the courtship where it doesn't seem to be that big of a deal when Isaac plays along with the flirtatious gal at the strawberry stand he and Iris pull off the highway to peruse, especially because he makes a semblance of an effort to show that he's as interested in the girl on his arm as she is in him. When they arrive at the upstate Airbnb they've rented for their first weekend away together, Iris and Isaac immediately begin playing house; they have sex within minutes of their arrival, stock the fridge once they've finished, take a dip in the pond out back, and mutually mock the creepy neighbor (David Cross) who assumes they're skinny dipping in his presence. They weren't, but they could have been, not because it's legal – Cross's Steve assures them it isn't – but because they seem comfortable together. The romantic chemistry between Gordon and Lerman might not be anything to write home about, but they make out and discuss their previous relationships enough that you're led to believe this is going somewhere.
That is, until they head upstairs for a late-night romp, one where Iris consensually handcuffs Isaac's wrists and ankles to the bedposts, and he reveals something of a whopper: He's been seeing other people and isn't exactly looking for a long-term commitment. Given that they've been dating for four months, Iris is taken aback and baffled by the notion that this length of time couldn't possibly mean more to her boyfriend (or so she thought) than a casual fling. Furious, she leaves Isaac bound to the bedframe before running downstairs to spiral further. If Iris' mental state wasn't made clear by her tears and heavy breathing, she straight-up Googles 'how to get a guy to realize that he wants to be with you,' a spelled-out representation of what's coming next. If Misery doesn't quite do it for you, imagine Gerald's Game with a dash of Fatal Attraction, plus the specific sight gag of Vince Vaughn being knotted to a headboard in Wedding Crashers, and you've painted a fairly accurate picture.
The arrivals of Geraldine Viswanathan and John Reynolds as the aforementioned friend on the phone and her actual, committed boyfriend allow for brief respite, but like the rest of the film's many desperate attempts at thematic quips, their presence becomes another predictable element in a story that feels like it could've been written by the viewer as they watched. It's far from unintelligent – okay, so not every viewer would turn in a competent first draft – but it never earns the intrigue it feigns as a given. Even when Gordon and Viswanathan team up for a witchcraft-based ritual that is meant to wipe Isaac of his most immediate memories, we've already grown tired of the schtick that positions these characters as terrified of what they've done and the consequences they're bound to face.
Oh, Hi! is at its most interesting not when it's doing the most movie-ish things on its radar, but when it spends time raising the common anxieties that modern millennials tend to have about commitment, especially of a romantic sort. It doesn't necessarily take a firm stance on who's at fault in this scenario, instead acknowledging the fact that both halves of its core partnership were in the wrong. (Isaac led Iris on; Iris, you know, kidnapped him.) Therein, however, lies the problem: What Oh, Hi! makes a habit of introducing profound concepts without ever intending to interrogate their significance, nor what their existence within someone says about that individual. It wants us to root for Iris and Isaac just as much as it wants us to root for Iris to acknowledge her worth and for Isaac to free himself from unjust imprisonment. Those two factions cannot coexist, no matter how clever Oh, Hi! believes it is being by pretending they can. Then again, Misery, Fatal Attraction, and even The Witches of Eastwick all exist in the same world as this film, so what do I know?
Oh, Hi! held its New York Premiere as a part of the Spotlight Narrative section of the 2025 Tribeca Festival. The film will debut exclusively in theaters on July 25, 2025, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Director: Sophie Brooks
Screenwriter: Sophie Brooks
Rated: R
Runtime: 94m