Not Okay could also be called The Worst Person in the World. It’s a fascinating dive into internet clout and internet shame starring Zoey Deutch as an average, clueless, lonely young woman who decides she wants to go to Paris. But that’s expensive so she fakes it through posted Photoshop images. Until a terrorist bombing where she allegedly just visited means she has to fake being a survivor too.

The film begins as an awkward cringe comedy with a main character who tries too hard. And then she lies and she starts to manipulate and you kind of hate (or at least cringe for) her. You know this is just leading toward an embarrassing reveal. But the longer it goes, the more you invest in the people around her. And maybe even in Deutch’s character too.

The film will likely be a Rorschach Test. Different people will come away with different interpretations of its main character. I see a shallow character who somehow goes through changes, actually becoming a better person, even though it’s all based on a lie. No matter how earnest she might become, she’s still the same liar from the beginning. Others will see a person who just becomes a worse and worse version of herself. And I think that duality is in the script.

Zoey Deutch gives a great performance, perhaps her best. If she wasn’t a bit of a star already, this is a star making turn. At first it doesn’t seem like anything too far out of her wheelhouse but, as the story progresses, she pulls off a great series of emotional turns. I was rooting for her to do the right thing and yet dreading the wreckage it would leave behind.

Mia Isaac plays a teenage girl Deutch befriends who previously survived a school shooting. If I hadn’t already said her performance in Don’t Make Me Go was star making in her first on-screen credit, Not Okay would be her star making performance for her second. This girl has talent with a capital Talent. Her emotional strength and shattered, shame-filled vulnerability are fantastic.

I loved the emotional intelligence of this script and its performances. I love how this film understands clout chasing and internet shaming and doesn’t shy away from it… and how, at least for me, it got me to feel for the worst person in the world. And more for her victim. This is a very solid film.

Score: 88