Director: Brent Bonacorso
Writer: Ben Epstein
Stars: Bella Thorne, Halston Sage, Taylor John Smith
Plot: Tyler’s crazy in love with his perfect girlfriend Ali, but when a big fight makes him and Ali break up, he lands in the arms of sexy out-of-towner Holly who shows him a night he’s gonna remember. The next morning he finds that not only is Ali taking him back, but Holly is a new student at their school and is dead set on her new man.
Running Time: 1 hour 29 minutes
Rotten Tomatoes Score: No Critic Score yet, Audience: 24%
Why I watched it: Honestly I don’t know, it was a new Netflix movie and I thought I’d watch it and I guess it is genre, really I have no excuse.
Random Thoughts: Alright let’s get this out of the way, it’s a Fatal Attraction rip-off actually it’s more of a Swim Fan rip off. There’s a couple of problems with trying to do this kind of movie with young actors, I know they’re playing teenagers but we’ll call them young actors, first off there isn’t the kind of weight to this movie, when you’re older there’s more things involved and two when you’re trying to do a PG Fatal Attraction it’s too tame to be fun, we need sex, violence and rabbits in pots, sorry for that but you know what I mean.
What I liked: It’s an attractive cast for sure, everyone is young and good looking and the film is nice and sunny and goth girls live in nice big beautiful homes. The set up is fine and the cast does what it can, I will give some credit to Bella Thorne she tries here and she doesn’t go way over the top. The film moves at a quick pace no lag in story it goes right to the plot pretty quick.
What I didn’t like: I like quick movies, I love when a movie is under or close to 90 minutes but this film hits their plot points so quick there’s no room to breath or get any kind of character beats at all. The main couple fight, break up he sleep with someone else all in 20 minutes, we don’t get a sense of the couple, it’s all superficial which is fine I guess but we also don’t get any reason to care about anyone. It’s a super quick cliff notes of a film, they love each, they break up, she goes with another girl, they have sex, the couple gets back together, the other girl is crazy, and that’s the substance we get out of it. A film like this needs to have characters and they need stakes, we need to care. A thriller likes this needs that slow burn build up the dread.
Now I get it, this isn’t suppose to be a deep film but then gives us camp, give us a steamy thriller. I will say some of the choices is weird, the crazy women scorned tries to kill one of the couples pretty quick, and nothing is done about it. The Bella Thorne character goes to crazy town pretty quick and yes she has a shine. My favorite bit is someone tries to look her up on social media and they find nothing, she’s a ghost then our male lead finds out her first name, you see she goes by her middle name, he puts her full name in google and finds out she’s rich and crazy with a horrible history, we also find out she isn’t taking her meds, I think you know where this is going. In a thriller you need one of two things you have to go the in depth character stuff with some weight to it or you make it balls out crazy and have it fun and sleazy. You Get Me does neither and it hides from any kind of blame or even common sense.
Final Thoughts: It’s not terrible but I wish the script wasn’t just a cut and paste job of better thrillers. It’s a harmless time waster but so slight and the title is so generic you won’t remember it in a month. You can kind of tell why critics haven’t run to review it. I wish Netflix would take some risks with their movies.
Rating: 4/10
Movie Burner Entertainment 