It is adapted from a play with the same name. Single mother Beth (Summer Phoenix) lives with her daughter Anna (Grace Van Dien, Stranger Things) who turns 17 the day after we meet her. Her mother just got engaged to the assistant chief of police. The next day, on Anna’s birthday, the man she believes to be a college student living hundreds of miles away shows up at her door. It seems to be a straightforward classic: you can get a stalker by meeting people online. That idea is reinforced by the poster. However, the poster and that troupe that is suggested on the poster aren’t quite what you get- but Redford intended it to be that way.
The script and the play were both written by Scott Organ. You can tell elements of the play were left in as there are minimal location changes. Many of the scenes take place in Beth’s house. In this adaptation, Redford and Organ worked closely together.
The first thing that stood out to me was how Anna immediately doesn’t approve of what Eric did. And Anna admits everything to her mother, something else that isn’t usually done nor is introducing the other person to your parent/soon-to-be step-parent. However, the moment Eric is introduced we see Beth’s freeze- that is the first indication that there is more going on than just a college boy from online.
I got to speak to Ms. Redford regarding the project:
Question: What drew you to this project?
Amy Redford: This project I love the fact that it had a debt that was being kind of Trojan horse in through genre and I thought the ideas that were being explored were definitely worthy of being explored in a way that was captivating and entertaining. The screenwriter who wrote the play, Scott Oregon, is also just a delightful human being and a really interesting writer. All of those things made me very excited to jump in and do the adaptation of the play.
Q: What was your favorite thing about the play?
AR: I would say that he doesn’t demonize you know that there are there’s a lot of behaviors that might be initially just kind of recognizable, and yet when we explore what is the genesis of those behaviors is more complex. And for me, I think we would benefit from having a more nuanced conversation around what is good and what is bad and who’s good and who’s bad. And, you know, we’re sort of moving away from a binary world and I think we should probably do that in our judgment of each other, and ourselves. So I felt like this is this is a really great way to explore some of those ideas.
Q: What were some of the changes, if you can talk about that, that you made between the play and the movie if there were any?
AR: Scott has a real facility with words. So, of course, when you’re in the theater there’s a lot more dialogue, there’s a lot more words, There’s a different way that you have to tell a story and move through time and space. And once you introduce the character of the camera, it can collapse a lot of those things. So, with the introduction of that, [the camera] or the expansion of some of the other worlds, we knew that it was necessary to lose some things. We also change the end. So in our exploration of what we really wanted to do, kind of provoke, we felt like it was a great opportunity to keep evolving the end of the movie and where the characters are left.
Q: What were your thoughts on the casting because it’s a very diverse casting, and it’s a very touchy subject.
AR: I think I was blessed because Summer Phoenix [Beth] jumped on first. Her character is not an easy or simplistic character to play. Her willingness and her courage to jump in and really explore all of the sides was something that I think, ended up being a source of inspiration for all of the cast; and each one of them knew that it was their responsibility to look into the shadows and honor that we are complex human beings and there’s so crafted that that was something that was important that these are our actors that really were possessive over the dignity of their characters. When you combine all of that and you get them all in a room together, then really exciting stuff starts to happen. So I was incredibly fortunate.
Q: What were some of the issues that you encountered filming it because you know, we are still in the kind of COVID world, especially with filming? [SAG-AFTRA union has specific rules regarding covid]
AR: Secretly loved it. Which I guess is the secret out now that I just said that. It was sort of like shooting on a closed set. So what you have is an intimacy that you sometimes lose when you don’t have to be careful about who is walking on the stage, so to speak. So you’d being able to have that with Bobby McCaskey sort of have your pod of the people but on the other hand, it makes some of the other crews’ jobs difficult- you know it is time-consuming. When you watch the budget go towards COVID testing it could be gone towards more hours of shooting. It can be tough, but it also makes you have to be very disciplined and kind of restrained in a lot of ways. So you know, there are challenging parts about it, but we’re everybody overcame it was, you know, a scrappy, Utah shoot. Nobody was daunted.
Q: Looking at the poster first I thought it was going to be okay, She meets a guy online and it turns out to be creepy, but it was so much more than that. Would you were you ever afraid of it falling into the stereotypical category of maybe people might just think it’s one of those stories? This is so much more. I feel like nuanced and it’s something that you don’t quite hear about.
AR: Thank you for saying that. I mean, it was a little bit delivered to sort of lull you into thinking it was a more stereotypical teen drama. But a lot of that was also because of Grace Van Dien (Anna) and the fact that she has a real determination to bring dignity to young women and play them with the sort of complexity and strength and smarts that I think a lot of young women deserve. And so she isn’t dismissible. You can’t just say, well, she’s just stupid, you know, she’s just naive. Then there’s a lot of all of us that I think we see in her so I think right off the bat, you realize that there’s more to this than just saying, well, she was just duped it’s more complex. And then that will sort of lead you to the ever-evolving layers.
All in all their characters and their actions felt very organic while the direction was great. The movie makes a point to see how young women and young men get treated differently when it comes to grooming and relationships with adults. I think it shows an interesting take on a sensitive subject that Redford handled well.
It is currently in theaters and available on demand.