by Lisa Nystrom
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Nancy Webb, Andi E McQueen, Naomi Silver-Vezina, Tranna Wintour
Intro:
… smart, genuinely funny and delightfully twisted.
In the age of social media influencers, the concept of a YouTube apology video has become cliché and awkward. It’s a mockable offence, often more maligned than the act that got said influencer cancelled in the first place. In the event of this kind of defamation, the only option for those who want to dodge accountability and stay in the limelight is to transform their image: to rebrand.
Content creators Thistle (Nancy Webb) and Blair (Andi E McQueen) are intimately familiar with this scenario after some bigoted remarks from Thistle accidentally got leaked during Blair’s livestream.
Nancy Webb, who wrote the screenplay alongside director Kaye Adelaide, is perfectly unhinged as Thistle, the narcissistic perfectionist longing for notoriety at any cost. Alongside her is the golden retriever coded wife Blair — loyal, eager to please, and not the sharpest tool in the shed, although she does have the ability to wield one when necessary.
In an effort to show the world that they’re putting all that bad blood behind them, they employ 8-months-pregnant videographer Nicole (Naomi Silver-Vezina) to film their wedding (fake), their baby announcement (fake), and to generally show the world that they’re simple folk living a cottagecore life (fake). It’s when Nicole tries to leave after a day of increasingly strange hijinks that the façade truly begins to crumble.
Quick-witted and chaotic, Adelaide and Webb have married found footage horror tropes with slicing satire and the result is smart, genuinely funny and delightfully twisted. Andi E McQueen is a charmer as Blair, their easy acceptance and good-natured energy are balanced expertly with just enough unsettling tension to keep you guessing, while the unassuming delivery of some of the most ominous dialogue dials up the comedy and keeps the film from ever falling into the trap of taking itself too seriously. Between stalking, stabbing and multi cam set ups that always capture that perfect shot, it will make you think twice next time you go to hit that like and subscribe button.