Once upon a time, on a street corner in Bushwick (where, of course, the “protagonist” of Not Okay lives), there was a manicured (read: commissioned) graffito that read, “Everything Is Not OK.” Even Bushwick-centric Chvrches posed in front of it circa 2018 in promotion of their then-new record, Love Is Dead. This phrase, too, aligning with the fatalism of a millennial/“xillennial” platitude like, “Everything Is Not OK.” Or, as Quinn Shephard shortens it to, Not Okay. This being the title of the second film she’s written and directed since 2017’s Blame. The latter, too, had its own psychological slant, but Not Okay turns psychology into satire, as that’s the only thing one really can do to cope with the sociopathy that’s sure to get even worse in the U.S. and worldwide as time wears on.
Like so many millennial manifestos, Not Okay is certain to offer up social media and a collective obsession with “virality” on the pyre of why said generation and those who have come after it are such, well, psychos. The kind who would, like Danni Sanders (Zoey Deutch), decide to not only fake a trip to Paris in order to gain more followers (apparently, she must have seen how well that worked for Emily Cooper [Lily Collins], and wanted to emulate the same “terrorist formula”), but also use an unexpected bombing attack—it’s Paris, after all—that occurs at the same time she’s “there” to her advantage.
And how does she do that, one might ask? Well, obviously by going to the airport in a red beret (again, very Emily Cooper) to join and blend in with those who survived the attacks as they land in New York from Paris. Besides, everyone already saw that she posted a picture in front of the Arc de Triomphe, where one of the blasts occurred, just five minutes before the explosion, so it’s practically like she has an obligation to keep pretending. And so, as her father, Harold (Brennan Brown), embraces her at the airport, Danni notices they’re being photographed by the press and decides to adjust her head “ever so” for the camera to better get an unobfuscated look at her face. This being just the beginning of what depths Danni is willing to sink to in order to convince everyone she has suffered through the kind of trauma that gets the masses off. Gets them to really notice a person… until their attention span drifts to another tragedy. Before, as Danni’s “supporting actress” puts it, “The internet likes to turn victims into villains” (fittingly, Danni “Freudian slips” by inverting that phrase and reciting it as, “The internet likes to turn villains into victims”).
To this point, it bears noting that Shephard starts the movie out from where we’ll eventually see Danni in the third act as she explains to us, “Have you ever wanted to be noticed so badly, you didn’t even care what it was for?” all as she’s bombarded with a series of hateful comments delivered through the various platforms available to trolls online. Certainly, many millennials and Gen Zers have known the “plight” in regard to that question, what with one’s entire sense of worth in the present epoch boiling down to how many likes and followers a person has. How many viral videos on DikSchlock. And so, at last, Danni has that “something, anything” she can be proud of—falling into her lap because of a “white lie” she partook of to get noticed in the first place. That’s all anyone in this era wants, American or otherwise (see also: the French firefighter who recently set some trees ablaze because of “a need for social recognition”). And as the tagline says, “Get famous or lie trying.”
Danni already tried to do it the “old-fashioned” way, after all. By attempting to write a clickbait article for the online rag she works for, Depravity (perhaps a spoof of Vice). Susan (Negin Farsad), her boss, grudgingly reviews the article Danni submits while Danni gazes at her own Instagram account longingly as she sits across from her. The narcissism monster is thusly established right quick. Buttressed by the article being called, “Why Am I So Sad?” Highlighting the various peaks of her white girl problems, among the reasons included are that she was out of town traveling when 9/11 happened, claiming it ruined her ability to effectively bond with her own New York-based generation (“It was the single-most formative trauma experience for zillennials, and since I wasn’t there, I didn’t get to share that bond with my peers”). When Susan asks, “Okay, and you don’t feel like it comes off a little tone-deaf? Offensive even?”
Danni counters, “Can’t tone-deaf be, like, a brand though? Isn’t that what Lena Dunham does?” Susan assures, “You don’t wanna be like Lena Dunham.” She being another emblem of a bygone era when it was actually desirable, as a white girl, to live in Bushwick instead of embarrassing and passé. And, speaking of, another “problem” she has, it’s that she lives “in J Train Bushwick. L Train Bushwick would be fine.” The former, she bemoans, doesn’t even have a “decent matcha” place yet (not true, as “J Train Bushwick” has been gentrified for years). But by later that day, it does, as she discovers an “influencer” named Colin (Dylan O’Brien) outside of it. He’s the guy she’s been crushing on ever since she saw him at the Depravity office. And why wouldn’t she? What with white girls of privilege seemingly having the worst taste in “men.” Almost as though to render their own lives more “interesting” by trying to make them shittier as a result of actively seeking out someone so abusive. And this is when we enter “Part I” of the movie, “No One Understands Me.” Of course, everyone “understands” the white girl. That she has an unshakeable habit of making herself the “main character” of every imagined “narrative.”
In any event, Danni’s wherewithal for such abuse from Colin’s kind comes from being pretty exploitative herself, as we see yet again when she goes to a support group for survivors of traumatic incidents relating to bombings and mass shootings so as to be able to accurately describe her “emotions” for an article she managed to get Susan to let her write. The sympathy cachet she suddenly has being the ultimate currency for getting everything she ever wanted.
The top of that list is, naturellement, fame. The thing every average joe has been conditioned to want in the climate of now, wherein we’ve all been assured of the Warholian adage about everyone getting their fifteen minutes. For Danni, a lot happens during said “fifteen minutes” (a.k.a. two months). Including her total lack of compunction over using quintessential Gen Zer (think X González) Rowan Aldren (Mia Isaac), the “voice of a generation” dealing with gun violence and its aftermath. Although still in high school, that hasn’t stopped Rowan from achieving viral fame for her often empowered, wise-beyond-her-years speeches at rallies for We’ve Had Enough. And it’s the viral fame element of Rowan that catches Danni’s attention in the support group she attends, where people like Charles (Kirk White) are still emotionally reeling from exposure to a bombing (in his case, the 2017 terrorist attack at Ariana Grande’s Manchester Arena concert). Danni, however, barely feigns being affected by what supposedly happened to her. Instead, she wields the “I’m numb” card as a means to explain away why she’s acting like such a socio. And yet, her comportment doesn’t seem to faze anyone, with Rowan playing right into the palm of her hand as Danni asks her for “help” writing the article. Because, as accented earlier in an elevator with her co-workers, Danni has a common white person’s obsession with the idea that minorities are given more attention solely because of their “more publicized exposure to trauma” (sometimes synonymous with “replacement theory”).
Naively trusting Danni’s intentions and wanting her to work through her pain, Rowan takes her to a place called Rage Space BK (“rage rooms” being, indeed, “all the rage” in a city that actively works to make one go insane on a daily basis). As she gives her tips on how to better channel her emotions out of “numbness,” she provides one of many chestnuts that Danni will proceed to use as her own, including, “Your pain is your biggest asset.” But most importantly, “If you’re not okay, that’s okay.” A platitude Danni sees fit to use in the form of a hashtag—#IAmNotOkay—in her article for Depravity. One that gets the website more views than it has in two years.
As everything magically comes up roses for Danni, there arrives a point when we have to wonder if everyone is accepting the bullshit she spouts because she is a white girl, or simply because she comes across as totally sheltered and dense, therefore to be written off as “harmless.” Like when she tells Rowan, “The poetry you do is crazy, it sounds just like Hamilton.” The entire time, we keep wondering why the fuck Rowan continues to bother with someone so, as mentioned before, tone-deaf. Maybe Rowan explains it best during her spoken-word (“Hamilton poetry”) performance during the finale of the film as she bemoans, “But God, I guess I am just so used to being stolen from that when I read my words in your voice, I reposted ‘em… And while I was blindsided, why am I not surprised? Why is a story like yours something we read every other night? Why do people like you get movies on Netflix and Hulu while people like me get told to sit tight and wait for change?” It seems a pointed reference to both Anna Delvey and Elizabeth Holmes, respectively, with Inventing Anna on Netflix and The Dropout on Hulu.
They’re the kind of shows that should have the same “Content Warning” Shephard ironically provides: “This film contains flashing lights, themes of trauma and an unlikable female protagonist. Viewer discretion advised.” And yes, she is unlikable, unredeemable (except for her attachment to her pet guinea pig) and “Everything Wrong With White Women in America (-It’s giving Karen 2.0),” as one article puts it post-Danni “coming clean.” Sure, maybe her parents are to blame, her “privileged upbringing,” as it were. Maybe she was too enabled and never knew how to unlearn that behavior (something that Search Party also addresses in a major way). And yet, plenty of people with objectively shittier childhoods somehow manage not to become certifiable. Like Rowan, for example. The person Danni still tries, up until the end, to use as her satellite source of redemption. That’s why she’s all ready to provide some generic, bullshit apology written down in her Notes app that she can regurgitate after Rowan finishes her performance. But mercifully, and for the only time in the movie, Danni finally just shuts the fuck up and listens without trying to approach and beg forgiveness after Rowan goes off on Danni (not knowing she’s in the audience and her (usually) white girl kind.
Sure to join the annals of the micro-genre that is “self-hating millennial cinema based in New York” (e.g., Fort Tilden, another searing comedy about white girls), Not Okay reminds us that even though it is, indeed, not okay for white girls to behave this way, there’s no sign of them slowing down. Even though Danni warns, “I wanna matter. Yeah, well, let me tell you. Be careful what you fucking wish for.”
