Reviews

This feels like a school project somehow ended up being made into a film. The acting is often over-the-top and uncomfortable to watch, and the characters felt cliché and two-dimensional. It is an attempt to deal with the topic of teen suicide, and yet fails at every turn. The dialogue is very stilted and the stories are unoriginal and stereotypical. I ended up skipping some of the slower parts, and I wish I had skipped the whole film.

Perhaps this film could have been better if it focussed on the story of just one character, because it tries to cover too many stories and ends up lacking depth. I think they were aiming to look at the different reasons that lead people to consider suicide, but these end up being far too simplistic: one character is transgender with unsupportive religious parents, another is a high-achieving student who is pressured to be 'perfect' by her mother, and another is a jock being bullied by his team. And there's one other character who has barely any screen time, apart from her death in a bathroom stall. These characters are only really seen through their social media presence and their deaths, all of which is overtly performative and disingenuous.

I appreciate the idea behind using vlog-style footage, but it is hard to do well and here it ends up feeling so amateur that it just adds to the failures of this movie. When this type of cinematography is combined with bad acting and a bad storyline, not even good intentions can save this film.

Another note I will add to this review: the general guidance for films (especially ones aimed at a younger audience, such as this one) is to avoid depicting suicide methods. This guidance is informed by a number of academic studies into the topic. This film shows a number of suicide methods, and although the intention is clearly intended to help people struggling with suicidal thoughts, it could easily have the opposite effect and trigger copycat suicides (known as the Werther effect). I am personally sick and tired of film makers not researching such sensitive topics and continuing to make garbage with a faux-positive message, lazily profiting off the ordeals faced by individuals suffering from poor mental health.

First of all, I enjoyed this for the intertwining storylines, which were portrayed with depth and sensitivity. Most importantly, though, it was the overarching meanings of moral ambiguity and the capacity to balance multiple perspectives within a single narrative.

This series is set in Shaker Heights, a community which has been in the news plenty of times for its racial integration policies, a theme which runs throughout the series. In an era of media scrutiny of such issues, in my opinion it is rare to come across a production such as this which doesn't take a strong moral stance, but exists in the grey areas - as life itself does.

There is also attention paid to the intersection at which where race-related issues and feminism meet; the sub-plot of Lexie (Jade Pettyjohn) ripping off the negative, racially-motivated experience Pearl (Lexi Underwood) has in trying to access AP classes. Lexie is called out on this by her boyfriend (Stevonte Hart) who forces her to confront the manner in which she has appropriated Pearl's hardship, and turned it into her own issue with the label of sexism. Part of the issue is that Lexie has never had her own hardship to write about; she has been sheltered and protected by her mother (Reese Witherspoon). This lack of hardship is turned on its head when she makes the difficult decision to have an abortion. I felt this was adept in depicting a struggle which transcends class, race and age (although it can of course be influenced by all those things) and the theme of motherhood, both desperately wanted and fearfully rejected. Showing motherhood from a variety of perspectives and examining the mother/daughter bond may not be ground-breaking, but here it was done with care and excellent attention to detail.

I thought the acting was superb on all fronts - much has been made of Kerry Washington's extreme facial reactions, but I felt it added to her character. As the gifted protegee of a lecturer, we see her in the present day as a struggling single mother, icy and reserved in the face of Reece Witherspoon's condescending blunders, but passionate when in the courtroom defending her friend.

This may be one of the best series I've watched in a while, hence the very high score, and it's nice to see a book translate so well into film.