Watch You Get Me on Netflix
Written by: Ben Epstein
Directed by: Brent Bonacorso
Starring: Bella Thorne, Halston Sage, Taylor John Smith
Rated: TV-MA
Plot
After a fight with his girlfriend Alison (Halston Sage), Tyler spends the night with transfer student Holly (Bella Thorne). The next morning Alison takes him back, but Holly isn't done with Tyler, worming her way into every aspect of his life.
Verdict
This movie is just an outline of undeveloped ideas. The characters have no purpose other than to awkwardly advance the plot. There's no tension, and nothing to hold your interest. This sub-genre has been done better by so many other movies. It doesn't take much to eclipse this movie.
Skip it.
Review
You Get Me is incredibly derivative, owing a debt to one of the earlier examples in the sub-genre, Fatal Attraction (1987) which beget the Mark Wahlberg led Fear (1996) and Swimfan (2002). The movies feature a character obsessed when another character rebukes their advances. You Get Me contains ideas from those movies with a deranged teenager latching onto a guy after a one night stand and turning his life upside down because if she can't have him no one can.
There are numerous problems with this movie, mainly that none of the ideas are fully developed. Holly is crazy, but for no real reason. She's done this before but we don't know why. Giving her character more backstory that boilerplate crazy could have made us sympathetic towards her, or make her more of a villain. Doing something with the character is better than nothing. The movie shows she's violent, provides a news article she was institutionalized and presents that as backstory.
This dabbles in unreliable narrator, but Holly's step-mother plays a bit part and doesn't outright deny Holly's claims.
Tyler is mostly benign. He cheats on his girlfriend, though he claims they were broken up. That doesn't excuse him, and he could have been portrayed as more of a bad guy, generating more sympathy for Holly before we realize she's the bad guy, not Tyler. That doesn't happen. It would have helped.
Holly goes from obsessive to murderous in just a handful of scenes. It's a big leap with no basis. It happens so fast there's no tension or speculation to her actions. We know she did it. There's no mystery. Holly infiltrates Tyler's life overnight. Slowly having her wiggle into all aspects of his life would have given this a better since of dread. It needed something. There just isn't much here. It's a collection of ideas done better in other movies.
Holly doesn't have a grand plan or even a good plan. She's just here to fill space until the movie ends. I never imagined typing the phrase, I'd rather watch Swimfan, but there it is. To note, Swimfan isn't a good movie.
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