"I don't want to wake up in a year and stab my parents to death with a kitchen knife."
"Well that makes one of us." (dialog, Michael Johnston talking to Hannah Marks at the 1:01 timestamp.)
Despite the relatively low IMDb score, Slash 2016 is a joy.
If you read the third-party reviews, you will note a tug of war between critics who think it is some form of uber-social commentary, and those who look at it as a sweet and engaging love story or rom-com.
The answer is probably somewhere in the middle, but this reviewer was more engaged by the teen rom-com.
For two reasons.
One, because the "classic" age of the teen rom-com seems to have passed -- remember Freddie Prinze? -- and this genre is neither as popular as it once was, nor as well done. Two, because that aspect of the film does not merely work, it actually spreads its wings and soars.
Credit writer/director Clay Liford for getting this recipe right. As I have noted in other reviews, a lot of what used to considered movie fare is now being done on TV, and a lot of the more personal creative work we used to see on some TV shows is migrating to film.
The dialog at the top of this review is typical of the film -- sharp, funny, and oddly reminiscent of the old Woody Allen rom-coms (with Johnston doing the neurotic Woody character, and Marks doing a wonderful collage of Diane Keaton liberally mixed with early Angelina Jolie.)
Marks is the revelation in the film. For these rom-coms to work (and this one does) she has to go beyond merely playing a character, she has to be (for the male viewer) every idiosyncratic girl in high-school that you wanted to get to know better -- but didn't.
Marks engages, holds the attention, and carries the film. An actress to watch down the road.
Recommended.
