Violet didn’t introduce itself well to me. I see what it was going for but mainly I just felt it starred an inert character. And that’s the name of the game… it’s about a person with crippling self-doubt and I guess if it made me want her to be more active, then it was doing its job. So I settled in to see where the flick was going.

The movie stars Olivia Munn as a Hollywood producer. She has an inner monologue which consantly puts her down and/or tells her she’s wrong, a text dialog describing more her physical/emotional feelings, and flashes of memory and/or clips of violence. She’s kind of a mess but she manages to portray a calm, cool persona to people. They don’t realize how her inner life is sabotaging her.

The acting is pretty good. I mainly watched it to see what Olivia Munn was up to these days and she did her job well. A lot of the pathos of the movie though is from the self-doubt techniques and not her direct acting. Which means she doesn’t have to overact to sell her doubt or insecurities. It’s an interesting performance because it could also be seen as a little blank… but I don’t think that’s the case. It’s just not melodramatic.

The movie would be disappointing if we ultimately didn’t get some catharsis or personal growth from the character. We get that in a set of good, fairly believable scenes. One that’s a bit more Hollywood and one that’s quite personal, almost cold. It’s enough to feel like we got some real character growth.

This is a movie about a character working through her inner demons and it accomplishes what it sets out to do. I was very engaged by the end, it just took a little bit for me to find its heart. Good film, well acted.

Score: 85