Whether you think Not Okay is a comedy or a horror movie might depend on your age (or at least how online you are). The follow-up film from Blame writer/director Quinn Shephard is a comic cautionary tale that looks like a happier version of Black Mirror. That might make it more dangerous.
Zoey Deutch plays Danni Sanders, a photo editor for a trendy online Buzzfeed clone, who wants so, so badly to have a trillion followers updooting her every whim. With few options to stand out in the digital crowd, she fakes a trip to Paris to impress social media celeb Colin (Dylan O’Brien) and scores big with her blue screened visits to cafes and touristy traps. But then a terrorist attack happens, everyone thinks Danni is a fortunate survivor, and she’s happy to sell the lie in exchange for newfound fame.
She’ll probably be able to keep the lie going and live happily ever after, right? Right? Although going to a support group and meeting actual survivors like Rowan (Mia Isaac) probably wasn’t the best idea for kidding a lid on things.
Creators are just getting started with explorations of what social media is doing to us, even as the non-fictional world is just starting to study the long-term effects (not great, Bob!) of living our lives completely in public. Up to now, social media has been the breeding ground for horror films, the colorful icing on modern love stories, and the subject of documentaries, but Not Okay looks like it goes the hardest yet at influencer culture — a world smothered in pink sauce and bottomless need. It hits Hulu July 29th.