Dane DeHaan Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Dumb Money’ (2023), starring Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Vincent D’Onofrio, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley and Seth Rogen

September 9, 2023

by Carla Hay

Paul Dano in “Dumb Money” (Photo by Claire Folger/Columbia Pictures)

“Dumb Money” (2023)

Directed by Craig Gillespie

Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of the United States, from 2020 to 2021, the comedy/drama film “Dumb Money” (based on true events) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Keith Gill, an insurance analyst and amateur stock-market adviser, becomes an Internet sensation with a cult-like following under his online alias Roaring Kitty, when he becomes a passionate advocate of buying stocks in the video game retail company GameStop, leading to a massive upheaval in the billionaire-owned hedge funds that want GameStop to fail.

Culture Audience: “Dumb Money” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and stories about financial underdogs who take on corporate giants.

Nick Offerman and Seth Rogen in “Dumb Money” (Photo by Lacey Terrell/Columbia Pictures)

The slick comedy/drama “Dumb Money” takes a little too long to get to the best parts of this story of financial underdogs versus billionaire corporate bullies, but it’s still a mostly entertaining ride with a talented cast. Some of the characters are very underdeveloped, while other characters are unnecessary distractions. People who are interested in finance and computer technology will enjoy and understand “Dumb Money” the most. “Dumb Money” might get compared to 2015’s “The Big Short” and 2010’s “The Social Network,” but “Dumb Money” isn’t as outstanding as those two Oscar-winning films.

Directed by Craig Gillespie, “Dumb Money” had its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. This “Dumb Money” feature film is not to be confused with filmmaker Ryan Garry’s 2021 short narrative film “Dumb Money,” which is based on the same subject matter of the GameStop stock phenomenon that disrupted Wall Street’s stock market. From 2021 to 2023, there have been at least seven documentaries about the same subject. The “Dumb Money” short film has an entirely different cast and crew from the “Dumb Money” feature film. Gillespie (the director of 2017’s “I, Tonya” and an executive producer/director of 2022’s “Pam & Tommy” miniseries) has a style that blends intense drama and satirical comedy, even when based on true stories.

The “Dumb Money” feature film’s screenplay—which was co-written by former Wall Street Journal reporters Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo—is based on Ben Mezrich’s 2021 non-fiction book “The Anti-Social Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees.” Mezrich also wrote the 2009 non-fiction book “The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal,” which was adapted into Aaron Sorkin’s Oscar-winning screenplay for “The Social Network.” Identical twin brothers Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, who famously sued Facebook to get more of Facebook’s profits (as depicted in director David Fincher’s “The Social Network”), are two of the executive producers of the “Dumb Money” feature film.

If “The Social Network” and filmmaker Adam McKay’s “The Big Short” are mentioned in comparison to “Dumb Money,” that’s because “Dumb Money” has many similarities in how it approaches a complex story of financial wheeling and dealing with many players on different levels. The overarching theme of all three of these movies is that greedy corporate types are villains who don’t hesitate to crush the hopes, dreams and finances of “underdogs” who dare to challenge them. The title of “Dumb Money” comes from the term that arrogant rich people in the financial sector use for non-wealthy people who invest in the stock market. A more polite term used for non-wealthy investors are “retail investors.”

The “Dumb Money” feature film is based on the true story of a phenomenon that happened from 2020 to 2021, when the video game retailer GameStop suddenly went from being on the verge of going out of business to became a red-hot stock investment, because of a surge of working-class and middle-class people who decided to invest in GameStop stock. This massive interest in GameStop stock was based largely on the advice of an Internet media personality using the alias Roaring Kitty. It also caused a panic among wealthy Wall Street investors who did not know how to handle this unexpected grassroots movement.

In real life, Roaring Kitty was a middle-class, self-described computer geek in his 30s named Paul Gill (played by Paul Dano), whose day job at the time was working as an analyst/financial educator for insurance corporation MassMutual. He did his stock-market videos and Internet chatting on his own time at his home. Because of the unexpected success of GameStop stock, many billionaire-owned hedge funds that were betting on GameStop stock to fail (a practice known as “shorting” or “short-selling” a stock) experienced financial meltdowns. “Dumb Money” is an occasionally convoluted play-by-play of what happened during this stock-market war that led to a U.S. Congressional hearing and federal investigations.

The movie’s principal characters have the same names as the real people, while some of the supporting characters are fabricated and are partially based on real people. (For the purposes of this review, the real people will be referred to by their last names, while the characters in the movie will be referred to by their first names.) Many of Gill’s real-life quirks are also portrayed in the movie. He liked to wear headbands (especially a red hedband) and T-shirts with kittens on the front of the shirts.

In the “Dumb Money” feature film, Keith is living in Brockton, Massachusetts, with his supportive wife Caroline Gill (played by Shailene Woodley) and their infant daughter (played by Leyla Eden and Mason Eden), who doesn’t have a name in the movie. (“Dumb Money” was actually filmed in New Jersey.) Keith has invested the couple’s entire life savings ($33,000) in GameStop. Most people who know about this investment think that Keith has made a reckless and foolish decision. Caroline is skeptical and nervous about the decision. But ultimately, she stands by Keith’s firm belief that GameStop investing could make them enough money, possibly millions of dollars, for them to retire early.

The movie shows that Keith’s online persona as Roaring Kitty (which he used on online platforms such as YouTube and on a Reddit subforum called WallStreetBets) didn’t start out being popular. In the beginning he had a very small audience, many of whom ridiculed him. However, his enthusiasm for GameStop was infectious. Over time, his following grew to thousands of enthusiastic fans who eagerly listened to Keith’s stock-market advice. In order to legally protect himself, Keith had disclaimers about how he was not a licensed stock broker, and his information about GameStop was for entertainment purposes only.

Keith’s other immediate family members, who all live nearby, are mother Elaine Gill (played by Kate Burton), a retired registered nurse; father Steve Gill (played by Clancy Brown), a retired truck driver; and Keith’s younger brother Kevin (played by Pete Davdison), a stoner who has trouble holding on to a steady job. In the movie, Kevin is working in a low-paying job as a food delivery person and is living with his parents. Kevin’s only purpose in the movie is to be comic relief, since he’s not involved in any of Keith’s stock-market shenanigans. Keith’s parents don’t find out about what Keith is doing in the stock market until he tells them some big news.

The Gill family is grieving over the death of Elaine’s and Steve’s other child: Sarah Elizabeth Gill, who died of COVID-19 in 2020, at the age of 43. Keith doesn’t like to talk about Sarah’s death, but there are a few scenes in the movie that show how her death has had a profound effect on him. It’s implied that Keith’s grief over his sister’s death is the fuel behind Keith’s willingness to risk his entire fortune and reputation on GameStop stock. Many people who experience the loss of a loved one often react with extreme “you only live once” decisions.

And because the movie’s story takes place during the height of the COVD-19 pandemic, there are several verbal and non-verbal references to the pandemic in “Dumb Money.” Observant viewers will notice that in the movie, the characters who tend to wear COVID-19 masks are either required to wear the masks as part of their jobs or are in precarious financial situations where they can’t afford to miss out on work if they get infected with COVID-19. There’s also an underlying implication that people being in COVID-19 quarantines or lockdowns resulted in more people spending time at home online, which might be one of the plausible reasons why the GameStop stock phenomenon happened so quickly.

“Dumb Money” opens with a scene taking place in 2020, showing one of the “villains” of the story panicking because he sees that GameStop stock is on the rise. Gabe Plotkin (played by Seth Rogen), the CEO of hedge fund Melvin Capital, is at his mansion in California, when he calls his fellow billionaire crony Ken Griffin (played by Nick Offerman), who’s relaxing at a Four Seasons Resort in Florida. During the conversation, Gabe tries not to show how frightened he is by this upward trend in GameStop stock, while he puts on a front in assuring Ken that Gabe has everything under control. Gabe wants to get Ken’s reaction to the rise in GameStop stock value. Ken doesn’t seem too worried at all. Viewers will later find out why.

The movie then does a flashback to three months earlier, when GameStop’s stock was valued at only $3.85 per share. Keith is shown doing his Roaring Kitty activities on the Internet, while other characters are introduced as eventual followers of Keith/Roaring Kitty. Every time a stock market player is shown on camera, the movie has a caption next to that person’s head that shows the person’s net worth at the time they are shown on screen. All of Keith’s followers who are depicted in “Dumb Money” are fictional versions of real people and are portrayed as having financial struggles before investing in GameStop.

In the city of Pittbsurgh, Jenny (played by America Ferrera) is a divorced mother of two sons, who look like they’re about 8 to 10 years old. It’s briefly mentioned in the movie that Jenny’s ex-husband abandoned the family. Jenny is financially broke (when she’s first seen in the movie, her net worth is a deficit of more than $5,000) and works as a nurse at Pittsburgh Presbyterian Hospital. She becomes obsessed with Roaring Kitty’s videos, and eventually invests in GameStop. Jenny gets repeated warnings and admonishments from her sassy, openly gay best friend/co-worker Chris (played by Larry Owens), who thinks she’s making a big mistake with this investment. Chris frequently advises Jenny to sell all of her GameStop stock.

In the city of Detroit, Marcos Garcia (played by Anthony Ramos) is a low-paid and under-appreciated cashier at a GameStop store. Marcos is also financially broke. His net worth is only $136 when he’s first seen in the story, and he’s denied a request to get an advance on his next paycheck. Marcos’ boss Brad (played by Dane DeHaan) treats Marcos in a condescending and dismissive manner, especially after he finds out that Marcos has invested in GameStop.

At the University of Texas in Austin, two students meet during a drinking game at a party and eventually become lovers. Their names are Harmony Williams (played by Talia Ryder) and Riri (played by Myha’la Herrold), whose sexual chemistry with each other can be seen as soon as Riri is told to put her hand down Harmony’s pants because of a dare during the drinking game. During this first conversation, Harmony tells Riri that she’s thinking about investing in GameStop stock because Harmony has become a fan of Roaring Kitty. Eventually, Harmony and Riri (who each has thousands of dollars in student-loan debt) invest their money in GameStop stock. Harmony has a scowling, unnamed roommate (played by Andrea Simons), whose annoyance with this romance is used as an occasional joke in the movie.

All of these financial underdogs express various levels of anger and motivation to fight back against what they believe to be a rigged stock market that was designed to make the rich get richer, and non-wealthy people to be at a disadvantage. After Harmony and Riri become intimate partners, Harmony tells Riri that her father used to be the general manager of a Costco-like retailer called Shopco, but he lost his job, his pension and much of his life savings. Harmony says it’s because he was a victim of a corporate raiding firm that bought Shopco to purposely bankrupt the company, in order to benefit the people who were short-selling Shopco stock.

Real-life billionaire investor Steve Cohen (played by Vincent D’Onofrio) is another player in the GameStop stock-market war depicted in “Dumb Money,” although this character is shown intermittently and doesn’t get nearly as much screen time as billionaires Gabe and Ken. Gabe is portayed as a tone-deaf partier who likes to spend lavishly and doesn’t really think about all the lives he’s ruining by short-selling stock. Ken is depicted as a cold manipulator who is very much aware of the lives he’s ruining, but he just doesn’t care.

And in this billionaire clique, it’s very much portrayed as a “boys’ club.” The only woman connected to this clique who has a significant speaking role (and it’s still a small role) is Gabe’s wife Yaara Plotkin (played by Olivia Thirlby), a “trophy wife” type. The only purpose she’s given in this movie is to worry about whether or not Gabe is making enough money so that she can maintain the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed. There are no female stockbrokers or female hedge fund leaders who are depicted as characters in this movie.

Two other characters who have pivotal roles in the GameStop stock-market war are the co-founders of the Robinhood app: Vlad Tenev (played by Sebastian Stan) and Baiju Bhatt (played by Rushi Kota), who marketed Robinhood as an app where ordinary people could buy and sell stocks for free. In the movie, Robinhood users include Jenny, Marcos, Harmony and Riri. Vlad and Baiji, who are both in their 30s, are “tech bro” stereotypes of being arrogant big talkers of start-up companies. Vlad is portrayed as the more corrupt person in this greedy and ambitious duo.

The first half of “Dumb Money” clips along at a fairly uneven pace where characters are quickly introduced, and then the movie slows down to show aspects of each character’s personal lives. “Dumb Money’ spends way too much time on Kevin, who didn’t need as much screen time as he gets, considering he had no part in the GameStop stock war. Keith was a star track runner in high school, so “Dumb Money” has multiple scenes of Keith jogging on a residential street or running on a local school’s track (sometimes with Kevin) as a way to relieve stress.

The second half of the movie is an improvement, as it gets into the conflicts created during the GameStop stock war. Still, there might be some “Dumb Money” viewers who will feel disconnected because of the movie’s first half, which can be perceived as a blur of people talking stock market jargon and Internet slang. If you’re the type of person who could care less about the intersections of technology and commerce, and if you will probably never read a Wall Street Journal article or Reddit forum in your life, then “Dumb Money” is not the movie for you.

Dano is an actor who can be counted on to deliver top-notch performances in his projects. He has made a career out of doing characters who are eccentric outsiders, so he’s not doing anything that’s very new or groundbreaking in “Dumb Money.” Still, Dano’s portrayal of Keith holds this movie together, when some scenes tend to be a little pointless (for example, there’s a scene where Jenny somewhat flirts with a guy she meets at a gas station) or completely unnecessary (any scene that shows what Kevin does when he’s not with Keith). The character of Caroline isn’t given much to do but be a stereotypical “worried wife” character.

For all of its flaws, “Dumb Money” still has enough that’s enjoyable to watch, regardless of how much viewers know about what happened in real life. A lot of the credit should go to the “Dumb Money” cast members, who admirably do as much as they can with the dialogue that they have, even if some of their characters are very underwritten. Toward the end of the movie, before the inevitable epilogue with updates of what happened in real life, there’s some archival footage of the real-life people who were involved in this stock-market war. Some of what they said was recreated in “Dumb Money,” which might be a based on a true story, but it’s not immersive enough to make you forget that you’re watching actors saying scripted lines on screen.

Columbia Pictures will release “Dumb Money” in select U.S. cinemas on September 15, 2023, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on September 22, 2023, and September 29, 2023.

Review: ‘Oppenheimer’ (2023), starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek and Kenneth Branagh

July 19, 2023

by Carla Hay

Benny Safdie and Cillian Murphy in “Oppenheimer” (Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures)

“Oppenheimer” (2023)

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Culture Representation: Taking place in the United States and in Europe, from the late 1920s to the late 1960s, the dramatic film “Oppenheimer” (based on the non-fiction book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer”) features a nearly all-white cast of characters (with a few Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer invents the atomic bomb, which is used in Japan toward the end of World War II, but he struggles with the moral consequences of this invention.

Culture Audience: “Oppenheimer” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker Christopher Nolan, the star headliners and history-based movies with a top-notch principal cast.

Emily Blunt and Cillian Murphy in “Oppenheimer” (Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures)

“Oppenheimer” has the words “awards bait” written all over it. This epic drama about atomic bomb inventor J. Robert Oppenheimer is crammed with showy performances from an all-star cast. The last third of the movie is the best and most meaningful section.

Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer” is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s 2005 non-fiction book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” Oppenheimer was born in 1904 and died in 1967. This three-hour movie has a story that spans from the late 1920s to the late 1960s, with most of the story taking place in the 1940s and 1950s. It’s a very ambitious film that at times seems more interested in showing off how many famous cast members can be stuffed into quick-cutting scenes. The middle part of the movie tends to drag with some repetition, but the movie’s last hour is absolutely riveting.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, also known as Robert (played by Cillian Murphy, giving an award-worthy performance), is an intense and quietly brooding American theoretical physicist who is originally from New York, but he did his most significant work in remote areas of Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the atomic bomb was tested. The top-secret research into making the atomic bomb was called the Manhattan Project. The movie shows that Robert had mixed feelings about this invention, even before it was actually built. He also worried about how this bomb could possibly start a competition among other countries (specifically, Russia, then known as the Soviet Union) to make an even more destructive bomb.

The first hour of “Oppenheimer” cuts in and out of scenes so quickly, it does a disservice to the story by preventing viewers from getting to know the main characters better. After a while, the movie’s first hour just becomes a parade of big-name actors portraying scientists and government officials who have various debates about the merits and morality of the atomic bomb. It all becomes a bit long-winded, although the visuals in the movie are often stunning. Also noteworthy is composer Ludwig Göransson’s stirring “Oppenheimer” musical score.

There are repetitive mentions of Robert always feeling like the white Anglos who dominate the U.S. government will never truly accept him because he’s Jewish. There’s some antisemitism depicted in the movie, but the biggest prejudices in “Oppenheimer” have to do with political alliances. The movie’s story is steeped in people’s obsession with finding out who’s a Communist (or Communist ally) and who is not. This “Red Scare” would eventually be the undoing of more than one person in the story.

The other real-life people portrayed in “Oppenheimer” include Leslie Groves Jr. (played by Matt Damon), the politically conservative officer of the U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers and director of the Manhattan Project; Lewis Strauss (played by Robert Downey Jr.), the founding commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission); and physicist Ernest Lawrence (played by Josh Hartnett), the extroverted inventor of the cyclotron, who befriends the more introverted Robert. Other real-life historical figures portrayed in “Oppenheimer” include Danish physicist Niels Bohr (played by Kenneth Branagh), a mutual admirer of Robert; hydrogen bomb inventor Edward Teller (played by Benny Safdie), an uneasy subordinate of Robert; and physicist Frank Oppenheimer (played by Dylan Arnold), Robert’s younger brother, who was recruited by Robert to work on the Manhattan Project.

And there’s more: Hans Bethe (played by Gustaf Skarsgård), the leader of the Manhattan Project’s theorist department; physicist/chemist Isidor Rabi (played by David Krumholtz), Robert’s longtime friend/advisor; Vannevar Bush (played by Matthew Modine), the leader of the Office of Scientific Research and Development; William Borden (played by David Dastmalchian), executive director of the U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Atomic Energy; and world-renowned scientist Albert Einstein (played by Tom Conti), who has a few contrived-looking scenes where he has private conversations with Robert.

And there’s even more: Jason Clarke as Roger Robb, special counsel to the Atomic Energy Commission; Macon Blair as Lloyd Garrison, Robert’s attorney; Rami Malek as physicist David Hill; Alden Ehrenreich as an unnamed U.S. Senate aide who works with Lewis Strauss; Casey Affleck as U.S. Army military intelligence officer Boris Pash; Dane DeHaan as civil engineer Kenneth Nichols. Also in the “Oppenheimer” cast are Tony Goldwyn as national security/defense government official Gordon Gray; Jack Quaid as physicist Richard Geynman; Josh Peck as physicist Kenneth Bainbridge; Alex Wolff as physicist Luiz Alvarez; and James Remar as U.S. government official Henry Stimson. Even with a cast packed with well-known actors, most of the supporting actors who are in the movie for less than 10 minutes each don’t have much to do but say their lines while sitting or standing in offices.

One of the best scenes in the movie is when Robert has a tension-filled meeting in 1945, with U.S. president Harry Truman (played Gary Oldman), who dismisses Robert’s concerns about the atomic bomb being a trigger for other countries, such as the Soviet Union, to get into an arms race to build an even more destructive bomb. The scene is less than 15 minutes long, but Oldman absolutely stands out as tough-talking President Truman, who has no regrets about deciding to drop the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that year. President Truman scolds Robert by saying: “Do you think Hiroshima and Nagasaki care who invented the bomb? They care about who dropped it. I did!”

The only two women with prominent speaking roles in the movie are mainly there as love interests to the male protagonist, even though these women have their own careers. Florence Pugh plays a commitment-phobic, Stanford-educated psychiatrist named Jean Tatlock, who has a fling with Robert around the same time that he meets his future wife Katherine, nicknamed Kitty (played by Emily Blunt), who is an outspoken botanist/biologist. Robert was Kitty’s fourth husband.

Both women are portrayed as being “difficult” for Robert, who’s depicted as the “long-suffering” person who has to deal with these strong-willed and opinionated women. Robert is portrayed as a “romantic” who just can’t help falling for women who might be wrong for him. “Oppenheimer” absolutely excuses his affairs with married women, including Kitty, whom he got pregnant when she was married to her third husband. Robert’s responsibility in this homewrecking infidelity is glossed over in the movie with a “wink, wink, nudge nudge/boys will be boys” attitude, while Kitty gets the most of the shaming.

As was the case with many wives in the 1940s and 1950s, Kitty (who came from an affluent family) had to make her career take a back seat to her husband’s career while she was the primary caretaker of their two children: son Peter and daughter Toni. Kitty is very unhappy in New Mexico. Her mental health starts to deteriorate, and she has some addiction issues.

Despite her personal challenges, Kitty maintains a defiant nature. Kitty encourages Robert to stand up for himself when he becomes the target of a smear campaign by former ally Lewis Strauss, who spreads lies that Robert is a secret Communist who might have been a spy for the Russian government. Blunt gives a compelling performance that has a little more depth than the typical “loyal wife of the main character.” Downey has his moments to shine as the sneaky and duplicitous Lewis, but Downey performs in “Oppenheimer” like he’s trying too hard to win an Oscar.

“Oppenheimer” is a very “male gaze” movie that wallows in showing a lot of men in ego rivalries and power struggles, while all the women react to whatever the men do. Pugh being topless in her sex scene with Murphy is a very “male gaze” decision, since she didn’t need to be shown with her naked breasts exposed in this movie. Meanwhile, her male co-star had absolutely no “private parts” nudity in this sex scene. Directors really need to stop this blatant double standard about nudity in sex scenes, where women have to show some kind of nudity, while men do not have to show any nudity. It’s a very outdated double standard that’s a turnoff to many viewers who aren’t stuck in this type of backwards and sexist mindset.

The lead-up to the making of the atomic bomb isn’t nearly as interesting in “Oppenheimer” as what happens in the aftermath, when Robert struggles with the consequences of his invention. He becomes famous and lauded as a war hero in America, but with that fame come scrutiny and jealousy from some of the people he had trusted as colleagues. People who know what happened in real life to Oppenheimer can debate if what is shown in the movie is entirely accurate. The “Oppenheimer” movie obviously makes him look like a sympathetic person.

One of the ways that “Oppenheimer” depicts Robert’s guilt is when he hallucinates visions of people in front of him dying from the bomb, with their faces melting or their bodies being ripped apart. Curiously, he only envisions white people suffering from this catastrophe, not the thousands of Japanese people who were actually killed by the bomb he invented. It might be a tone-deaf part of the movie, or it might be writer/director Nolan’s way of showing that even “liberal” Robert Oppenheimer couldn’t see past his own insular world that has no racial diversity.

“Oppenheimer” is not the masterpiece that some people might hail it to be. As a history-based drama, it’s got a very narrow point of view. However, the performances by Murphy, Blunt and Oldman elevate this very long movie, even if much of the dialogue is basic and perfunctory. During the course of the story, Robert Oppenheimer goes from being an underdog to a hero to an embattled public figure. It’s this most difficult phase of his life that brings out his true character and the best that “Oppenheimer” has to offer.

Universal Pictures will release “Oppenheimer” in U.S. cinemas on July 21, 2023.

Review: ‘The Stranger’ (Quibi), starring Maika Monroe, Dane DeHaan and Avan Jogia

April 30, 2020

by Carla Hay

“The Stranger”

Directed by Veena Sud

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles, the crime drama “The Stranger” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Latinos and Asians) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A woman who’s a rideshare driver picks up a very dangerous passenger who stalks her and tries to frame her for murder.

Culture Audience: “The Stranger” will appeal primarily to people who like convoluted crime dramas and don’t expect the story to be very believable.

Maika Monroe and Avan Jogia in “The Stranger” (Photo courtesy of Quibi)

The streaming service Quibi (which launched on April 6, 2020) has set itself apart from its competitors by offering only original content, and each piece of content is 10 minutes or less. Therefore, content that Quibi has labeled a “movie” actually seems more like a limited series, since Quibi will only make the “movie” available in “chapters” that look like episodes.

One of the original movies that Quibi debuted on April 13, 2020, is “The Stranger,” a thriller about a Los Angeles female rideshare driver being stalked by a mysterious young man who seems intent on framing her for murders that are being committed in the city. Unfortunately for Quibi’s “The Stranger,” it arrives just after the January 2020 premiere of Netflix’s original series “The Stranger,” which is about a stranger who arrives in a suburb and starts exposing scandalous secrets about the residents. It’s one of the reasons why entertainment creators need to come up with more original titles.

Quibi’s “The Stranger” (written and directed by Veena Sud) takes place in a 12-hour period (7 p.m. to 7 a.m.) in the life of a young woman named Clare Johnson (played by Maika Monroe), who works as a rideshare driver for a company called Orbit. One evening, Clare picks up a young male passenger named Carl E. (played by Dane DeHaan) at a Hollywood Hills mansion for a trip to the airport.

Carl has only a duffel bag as his luggage, and he immediately asks if he can sit in the front of the car with Clare. Sensing her hesitation, Carl offers to sit in the back if it would make her more comfortable. Not wanting to alienate this presumably wealthy passenger, Clare says in a friendly manner that it’s no problem for Carl to sit in the front.

While they’re driving to the airport, Carl finds out that Clare is so new to Los Angeles that she’s surprised that their trip to the airport will take about 45 minutes. She tells Carl that she recently moved to L.A. from Kansas to become a screenwriter. In the meantime, Clare has become an Orbit driver to pay the bills.

Carl quickly becomes flirtatious with Clare. When he sees that she has some mustard on the side of her mouth, he gently wipes some of it off. Clare sheepishly admits that the mustard is from a veggie burger that she had eaten because she didn’t have time for a full dinner. Carl then says that he doesn’t feel like going to the airport after all, and he would rather have dinner with her instead.

He starts to insist that they have dinner together. Clare then mentions the mansion where Carl came from as a way to deflect his advances, and he tells her nonchalantly that he doesn’t live there. When she asks him if his parents live there, he tells her no.

The conversation takes a very dark turn when Carl tells her with an evil smirk that he actually doesn’t know the house owners because he randomly went to house and killed the entire family (a mother, a father and their daughters) who lived there, by shooting and stabbing them. He then shows her the knife that he says he used for the stabbings.

A terrified Clare is now a hostage to this demented person as the car heads down the hills. Because Carl knows that Clare is an aspiring screenwriter, he demands that Clare tell him a story while she’s driving, and he says he’ll kill her if he doesn’t like the story. Rather than remain a hostage, Clare decides to crash her car in a nearby signpost. Carl is thrown out of the car by the impact, and Clare speeds off to get help.

Clare calls 911, describes what happened, and she tells the operator that she’s frightened that this deranged passenger will still come after her. Clare stops at a parking lot of a convenience store, because the 911 operator tells her that police officers will meet her there. When the two police officers arrive, they tell her that the occupants of the mansion are two senior citizens who are alive and well, that no one reported any disturbances in the area, and that no one fitting Carl’s description was seen in the area.

Clare, who is shocked by this information, tells the cops that Carl mentioned having a gun, so she asks them to check the duffel bag that he left in the back of her car. But when the officers inspect the back of the car, they see the duffel bag (which doesn’t have a gun) and a life-sized female blow-up sex doll outside the duffel bag.

That’s the first sign that “The Stranger” is going to have some ridiculous twists. Clare and Carl were in the front seat the entire time that they were in the car together. How did the doll get outside the duffel bag in the back seat? How did the blow-up doll get inflated? None of that is ever explained in “The Stranger.”

Clare insists that she’s telling the truth and offers to show the cops the text messages that she exchanged with Carl before she picked him up, as well as the reservation that he made. But when she goes to look for that information on her phone, she finds that every trace of Carl has mysteriously disappeared from her phone. It never occurs to Clare to have Orbit confirm the record of the reservation and Carl’s Orbit account. It’s one of many obvious plot holes that “The Stranger” has.

The two police officers who take Clare’s report are very irritated with her because they think she’s playing some kind of prank. They tell Clare that they’re not going to charge her with filing a false police report, but warn her that if they catch her doing anything else that’s illegal, she will be arrested.

A confused and now angry Clare starts to throw away the blow-up doll and the duffel bag (wait, isn’t that evidence?) in a garbage dump at the side of the convenience store. But then, a store employee rushes out and tries to stop Clare.

The employee’s name is Jay, nicknamed JJ (played by Avan Jogia), and he nervously tells Clare that she can’t throw away anything weird there because his boss frequently checks the garbage dump to look for anything suspicious that could get the convenience store in trouble. (Really? Who does that?) Clare explains that she’s had a rough night, so JJ takes pity on her and lets her throw away the blow-up doll and the duffel bag.

But Clare’s night is about to get worse. When she gets home to her apartment, she calls Orbit to report what happened to her and finds out that her account has been suspended, pending an investigation into a customer complaint that Clare pulled a knife on the customer. Clare is furious and tells the person she’s speaking to on the phone that the customer is lying and that he was the one who pulled the knife on her.

Again, it never occurs to Claire to find out the real identity of the customer who filed the complaint, since Orbit has the record of the reservation and the customer’s contact info. But with no police report to back her up, it’s a “he said/she said” situation, and Clare is now out of a job at Orbit.

Clare feeds her small terrier dog Pebbles, who starts to growl, as if someone else is in the apartment. Sure enough, it’s Carl, who chases a terrified Clare with an apparent intent to kill her. Clare picks up Pebbles, races out of the apartment with the dog, and Clare barely manages to escape in the elevator before the elevator door closes so that Carl can’t get to her.

After narrowly escaping from Carl, Clare gets in her car and drives to a local church. Clare calls her mother in the church bathroom and tells her everything that’s happened. Her mother pauses and sounds skeptical. That’s when it’s revealed that Clare has a history of fabricating stories and false accusations. Her mother wonders if Clare is having another one of these episodes.

Is Carl real or is this all a figment of Clare’s imagination? That answer is eventually revealed, but the rest “The Stranger” is a cat-and-mouse chase between Carl and Clare. While Clare is alone in the church’s ladies room, someone has plunged a bloody knife into the restroom’s front door.

Like an idiot, Clare takes the knife, only to find out that a street vendor outside the church has just been stabbed to death. She walks out with the knife, in full view of several witnesses, who (not surprisingly) think that Clare is the one who committed the murder. Clare panics and speeds off in her car.

Where does she go next? To the convenience store to get JJ’s help. She tells him what’s been happening to her and that Carl (whoever he is) has decided to stalk her and ruin her life. JJ is skeptical until something something weird happens while they’re at the store: The security cameras at the store are suddenly showing the inside of JJ’s home.

In order to believe what’s going on in “The Stranger,” you’d have to believe that Carl is able to predict Clare’s every move and he’s been able to elude the untold number of security cameras that are in a big city like Los Angeles. And the whole story is based on the shaky, far-fetched premise that a rideshare passenger like Carl is untraceable, when rideshare companies require identity verification of the passengers making reservations.

There’s also a ludicrous scene where JJ and Clare are driving in JJ’s car somewhere at night. JJ gets stopped by a police officer, the police officer ends up dead, and JJ and Clare come up with a scatter-brained idea to run off to Mexico out of fear of being blamed for the cop’s death. JJ and Clare decide to take a train to El Paso, Texas, because the train will then head to Mexico.

Bizarrely, JJ and Clare are the only passengers on the train, until Carl shows up and chases them on this empty train and shoots at them. JJ and Clare run away and jump onto the train tracks to escape. Is this a delusional hallucination or is this supposed to be real? All is explained at the end of “The Stranger,” but it’s a far-fetched and poorly conceived explanation.

During the frantic quest “to get to the truth,” Clare holds on to Pebbles like Dorothy holds on to Toto in “The Wizard of Oz.” But “The Stranger” is so badly edited that there are times, such as during a chase scene in the train tunnel, when the dog is nowhere in sight (because Clare dropped the dog somewhere miles away), but then a later scene shows Clare holding the dog again when she wouldn’t have had time to retrieve the dog.

There’s nothing special about any of the acting in “The Stranger.” DeHaan’s Carl character is a very two-dimensional villain, while Monroe is stuck playing a character who makes so many dumb decisions that it’s hard to feel much sympathy for Clare. Jovia makes the most out of playing JJ, who is the most well-rounded character (he also has the funniest lines), but there’s a plot development involving JJ that is so moronic that it’s a big sign of how the rest of the story goes downhill.

“The Stranger” had an interesting, although not entirely original, concept that is ruined by substandard screenwriting and sloppy editing. It’s a letdown, considering that “The Stranger” writer/director Sud has done better work before. (She was a writer/executive producer for the crime-drama TV series “The Killing” and “Cold Case.”)

How many times have there been mystery thrillers where the plot is about a murder suspect who claims to be innocent? How many crime dramas have there been about a woman being mercilessly stalked? (A “stalker drama” describes about half of all Lifetime movies.) You can add Quibi’s “The Stranger” to the list of these unoriginal ideas, but file this show under the category of “disappointing” and “forgettable.”

Quibi premiered the first three chapters of the 13-chapter “The Stranger” on April 13, 2020.

UPDATE: Hulu premiered “The Stranger” as a feature-length movie on April 15, 2024.