Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the horror film “Companion” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one Latino, one African American and one Asian) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A female robot companion fights for independence from the man who wants to control her.
Culture Audience: “Companion” will appeal mainly to people who are interested in watching twist-filled horror movies that have a lot to say about power dynamics between males and females.
Lukas Gage, Harvey Guillén and Jack Quaid in “Companion” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)
“Companion” is a twist-filled sci-fi horror film that offers a darkly comedic depiction of conflicts over gender roles and how much a human-looking robot powered by artificial intelligence should have free-thinking independence from its owner. There’s a lot of bloody gore in “Companion,” which also has many overt messages about the type of toxic masculinity that deliberately exploits females. The movie’s ending is predictable, but “Companion” is still a fairly wild and suspenseful ride to get there.
Written and directed by Drew Hancock, “Companion” is his feature-film directorial debut. “Companion” producers Roy Lee and J.D. Lifshitz previously collaborated on the 2022 horror film “Barbarian.” “Companion” takes place in an unnamed U.S. city. (“Companion” was actually filmed in New York state.) Although “Companion” has plenty of horror clichés—such as the main characters being in a remote area with a killer on the loose—there’s still enough originality in the movie to make up for the formulaic plot points.
In “Companion,” an unmarried couple named Josh Beeman (played by Jack Quaid) and Iris (played by Sophie Thatcher) take a car trip to a remote lake house for what is supposed to be a relaxing getaway trip. Josh and Iris have been together for an unspecified period of time. They have been invited to the house by Josh’s materialistic friend Kat (played by Megan Suri), who is dating the house’s sleazy owner Sergey (played by Rupert Friend), who is a wealthy Russian-immigrant businessman.
Two other guests at the house are another couple: Eli (played by Harvey Guillén) and Patrick (played by Lukas Gage), who uses cooking skills to be the chef for everyone in the house. Eli and Patrick—just like Josh and Iris—seem to be blissfully in love and in a happy relationship. Observant viewers will notice that Josh and Eli are the dominant partners in their respective relationships.
As already revealed in the trailer for “Companion,” Iris is really a companion robot controlled by Josh. A flashback in the movie shows that when Josh received Iris (Josh rented her from a company called Empathix), he was told by the Empathix delivery people that Iris can be programmed by Josh to do many things, but she cannot lie, and she cannot kill people and animals. Josh controls Iris’ levels of intelligence and emotions. He also gets to choose Iris’ memories, such as their “meet cute”/”love synch” moment at a grocery store, where Josh accidentally tipped over a container of oranges in front of Iris.
Without revealing too much of the movie’s plot, it’s enough to say that Sergey ends up dead after he sexually harassed Iris when they were alone together. A lot of chaos ensues when Iris tries to escape. And not everyone else makes it out alive. If Iris ends up killing anyone, the movie has an explanation for it. “Companion” has some “inside joke” pop culture references, such as a scene where the Goo Goo Dolls’ 1998 hit “Iris” is played; the song’s lyrics apply to the situation at hand.
“Companion” is the type of movie that does a lot with a small number of people in the cast and the limited number of locations. (Almost the entire movie takes place in the lake house and within a few miles from the lake house.) Thatcher gives a standout and convincing performance as a robot who discovers her humanity and fights for her independence. The other cast members also do well in their roles, but some of the supporting characters are intentionally shallow.
Although some of the technology shown in “Companion” did not exist at the time the movie was released in 2025, companion robots are most definitely a reality and have existed for years. The majority of these companion robots are females that are used by men as sex toys. This “Companion” movie invites viewers to look beyond the “slasher flick” aspect of the story and think about how this type of technology can be used and abused in real life. In many ways, the potential real-life consequences are much more horrific than what’s portrayed in this fictional film.
Warner Bros. Pictures released “Companion” in U.S. cinemas on January 31, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in Utah, the horror film “Heretic” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Two young Mormon missionaries visit a potential convert in his home, where he traps them for sinister reasons.
Culture Audience: “Heretic” will appeal mainly to fans of star Hugh Grant and horror movies with many themes about how religion affects people’s lives.
Hugh Grant in “Heretic” (Photo by Kimberley French/A24)
“Heretic” is a very talkative horror film for the first third of the movie, where there’s much discussion about faith and religion. The acting performances are compelling, even when some of the plot twists aren’t very credible. Mind games outweigh any gore.
Written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, “Heretic” had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie’s biggest action scenes don’t happen until the last third of the movie. There’s a lot of “slow burn” tension that eventually increases and turns into effectively suspenseful moments. “Heretic” has some absolute surprises that would have had more impact if the movie’s ending hadn’t been so conventional.
“Heretic” has three characters that get the vast majority of screen time in the movie, which takes place primarily inside one house in an unnamed suburban city in Utah during the course of 24 hours. (“Heretic” was actually filmed in British Columbia, Canada.) The date in the story is November 7, in an unnamed year in the 2020s. The movie successfully conveys the feelings of foreboding and dread of the two visitors who become trapped in the house by the house’s owner.
The opening scene of “Heretic” shows the two young Mormon missionaries who will become these kidnapping victims. The characters in the movie aren’t identified by their first names, perhaps as a way to keep them at a certain emotional distance from the audience. Not much is told about the personal backgrounds of any of the characters in “The Heretic.”
Sister Barnes (played by Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (played by Chloe East), who are both in their late teens or early 20s, are sitting outside on a bench as they talk about the evils of pornography, but they’re curious enough to watch porn anyway. Sister Paxton says that when she was watching a porn movie, she could practically see the soul being sucked out of an actress in a sex scene. These missionaries both agree that the Tony-winning musical “The Book of Mormon” (which they’ve been forbidden to see) is obscene and isn’t representative of Mormon missionaries.
Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton have opposite personalities. Sister Barnes is introverted, brooding and emotionally guarded. Sister Paxton is extroverted, perky and talkative. Sister Barnes seems to be more “street smart” and more intellectual than Sister Paxton, who is more likely to know about pop culture than ancient philosophy. Sister Barnes is more of a planner who likes to take charge of a situation, compared to Sister Paxton, who seems to be more spontaneous and easygoing.
Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton are both devoted to their cause of going to people’s homes to preach to them about the Mormon religion to strengthen the faith of those who are already Mormon, or to convert those who are not Mormon. It’s later revealed that Sister Barnes is still emotionally scarred from the death of her father, who passed away of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, when she was a child. Sister Paxton’s parents are still alive and married, but she grew up in Portland, Oregon, and is still trying to adjust to this smaller city in Utah.
Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes, who travel by bicycle, have been out almost all day. It’s almost getting to the end of the day when it will soon turn dark. Their last appointment of the day is with someone named Mr. Reed (played by Hugh Grant), who lives in a Victorian-styled house in a fairly remote wooded area. All that these two missionaries know is that Mr. Reed wants to learn more about the Mormon religion.
When they arrive at Mr. Reed’s house, he seems very polite and friendly. Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton explain to him that they can’t go inside any home with a man unless there’s another woman who’s in the home. Mr. Reed says that his wife is baking blueberry pie in the kitchen. It has started to rain, so Mr. Reed invites Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton inside. During the course of the movie, the rain turns into heavy snow.
As already revealed in the trailer for “Heretic,” Mr. Reed lies about having a wife in the house, and he traps the two missionaries. Long before Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton find out that they’ve been kidnapped, there’s a huge stretch of this 110-minute movie where it’s nothing but Mr. Reed, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton having an increasingly comfortable conversation. The first red flag is when Mr. Reed asks Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton: “How do you feel about polygamy?”
Mr. Reed reveals that he studied theology when he was a university student, which is why he says he is fascinated with different religions. It’s obvious that Mr. Reed is not only highly intellectual (he quizzes the missionaries about different topics about religion, faith, history and spirituality), but he also has some very crude and twisted intentions. It’s explained at one point that Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton can’t use their cell phones because the house’s walls and ceilings are made of metal.
Music plays a prominent role in “Heretic,” most notably in a scene where Mr. Reed plays The Hollies’ 1974 hit “The Air That I Breathe” when he lectures the two missionaries about life’s “re-iterations.” He explains that Radiohead was sued for plagiarism for Radiohead’s 1992 hit “Creep,” because of the melody similarities to “The Air That I Breathe.” Lana Del Rey was later sued by Radiohead for plagiarism because Radiohead claimed that Lana Del Rey’s 2017 song “Get Free” was a plagiarism of “Creep.” Mr. Reed’s point: Religions, just like some songs, really aren’t original and are just of re-iterations of things that previously existed.
Grant is quite masterful at playing a villain who is both charming and sleazy. Mr. Reed is able to intrigue his victims because as soon as he shows his sleazy side, he puts on the charm and makes his victims question if they are being paranoid or are judging him too harshly. Grant’s performance is one of the reasons why “Heretic” is not as boring as it could have been in the first third of the movie, which has nothing but talking. However, some viewers might grow a little impatient to get to the action scenes, which happen much later in the movie than what it looks like in the “Heretic” trailer.
Thatcher and East give worthy performances as these two contrasting missionaries, although viewers still won’t feel like they really know Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton by the end of the movie. Just like many other horror movies, “Heretic” will make viewers wonder why these missionaries didn’t leave when things started to get weird with Mr. Reed and it was obvious there was no wife in the house. “Heretic” makes the point that these missionaries have been taught to be obedient and fulfill their mission as much as possible with every person they meet. In other words, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton are more trusting and more compliant than perhaps the average non-missionary person would be in the same situation.
Although the surprises in “Heretic” are mostly clever and truly unpredictable, a few twists just don’t ring true at all. For example, one of the missionaries has a complete change in personality toward the end of the film, which shows she had been deliberately hiding certain aspects of herself all along. This personality reveal only comes conveniently during the part of the movie that turns into a slasher flick and there’s a “life or death” battle.
A few plot holes are revealed early on in “Heretic.” One of the biggest plot holes is Mr. Reed used his name and real home address to make the appointment, which is in the records of the church where Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton work. When the two missionaries aren’t back at the church when expected, they’re considered missing. A church official named Elder Kennedy (played by Topher Grace) then goes looking for them.
Therefore, no matter what happens to these missionaries, there’s a record that the last place that they were supposed to be for the day was at Mr. Reed’s house. It would automatically make Mr. Reed a person of interest if there’s a police investigation of these missing missionaries. Mr. Reed is meticulous and cunning in many other aspects of his kidnapping plan, so it seems quite stupid of him to leave such a big clue that would make him the target of an investigation.
The screenplay flaws in “Heretic” don’t ruin the movie, but they lower the quality of the film, which undercuts the premise that Mr. Reed is supposed to be a criminal mastermind. A true mastermind would not make the obvious mistakes that Mr. Reed makes in luring these two missionaries into his trap. “Heretic” is at its best with its sharp dialogue and intense psychological horror scenes. The movie is not quite the non-stop thrill ride that it appears to be, but it has enough to keep viewer interest to see how everything is going to end.
A24 will release “Heretic” in U.S. cinemas on November 8, 2024. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in select U.S. cinemas on October 30, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in New Orleans, the horror film “The Boogeyman” (based on a short story by Stephen King) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the middle-class and working-class.
Culture Clash: A 16-year-old girl and her 10-year-old sister experience an evil creature in their home after their mother dies, but their therapist father doesn’t believe his daughters.
Culture Audience: “The Boogeyman” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Stephen King and unimaginative horror movies filled with a lot of clichés.
David Dastmalchian in “The Boogeyman” (Photo by Patti Perret/20th Century Studios).
Dull, dimwitted, and very derivative, “The Boogeyman” offers minimal scares and has too many scenes of people talking about certain horrors and not enough scenes actually showing those horrors. The movie’s last scene is very weak and underwhelming. The majority of “The Boogeyman” is literally a back-and-forth slog of two underage sisters (separately or together) looking frightened in dark rooms and then trying to convince their skeptical father that they’re being haunted. And when the evil creature they see finally does appears in full view, it’s just more of the same type of showdown that’s been in countless other horror movies.
Directed by Rob Savage, “The Boogeyman” is based on Stephen King’s short story that was first published in the March 1973 issue of Cavalier magazine, and then republished in King’s 1978 short-story collection “Night Shift.” King’s “The Boogeyman” (which had only three characters) had a much better ending than the formulaic dreck that’s in “The Boogeyman” movie, whose screenplay was written by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods and Mark Heyman. “The Boogeyman” movie adds several characters to give the story enough for a feature-length film. But the additions do not bring any creativity to the story. Everything is a rehash of many other horror movies about an evil creature or spirit that’s haunting a household.
In “The Boogeyman” short story, the only characters were a psychotherapist named Will Harper, his client Lester Billings and The Boogeyman. The story took place in one setting: Will’s office, during a therapy session between Will and Lester. Will has a wife and kids, who are mentioned in the short story, but these other Harper family characters do not appear in the story.
In “The Boogeyman” movie (which was filmed on location in New Orleans), Will Harper (played by Chris Messina) is a supporting character, while his two daughters are more of the focus. The main protagonist is 16-year-old Sadie Harper (played by Sophie Thatcher), a moody introvert. The main location in the movie is the Harper house, where Will has his therapist office. Sadie and her inquisitive 10-year-old sister Sawyer Harper (played by Vivien Lyra Blair) live there, but Will is a widower in the movie. It’s mentioned that Will’s wife (the mother of Sadie and Sawyer) died fairly recently in car accident.
Viewers know the death is recent because early on in the movie, Sadie is shown at her high school (in one of several scenes that take place at the school), and many of the students react to her like someone who’s just come back from a brief hiatus. On her first day back at school since her mother’s death, Sadie is wearing one of her mother’s dresses. And (cliché alert) a group of “mean girls” bully Sadie about it near her locker.
The leader of the mean girls is a snooty blonde named Natalie (played by Maddie Nichols), who says the most to make Sadie feel bad about Sadie’s choice in clothing. When Sadie tells Natalie, “You’re being a bitch,” it leads to a tussle, where Sadie gets shoved hard against her locker. The only student at school whom Sadie considers to be a close friend is Bethany (played by Madison Hu), who sticks up for Sadie whenever she can.
Back at home, the Harper family members are dealing with their grief in different ways. Will has become more caught up in his work and more emotionally distant from his daughters. Ironically, even though Will is a therapist who’s trained to help people with things such as grief, he’s avoiding helping his own daughters process their own grief. Instead, Will has hired a therapist named Dr. Weller (played by LisaGay Hamilton) to counsel Sadie and Sawyer.
Sadie would rather talk to Will about how to cope with her mother’s death, but Will tells Sadie to talk to Dr. Weller about it instead. This rejection causes Sadie to feel more alienated and depressed. Sawyer clings to Sadie for emotional support, but Sadie is barely hanging on to feeling like she’s capable of functioning in the way she used to before their mother died. And things are about to get worse when Sadie and Sawyer find out that their house is haunted.
One evening, when Will has seen his last client of the day, a mysterious stranger shows up unannounced at the house. His name is Lester Billings (played by David Dastmalchian), and he asks Will if he could have a therapy session. Will tells Lester that he doesn’t give therapy to a new client without a phone consultation first. However, Lester pleads for Will’s help. Lester looks so sad and desperate that Will agrees to make an exception for Lester.
During the therapy session, Will asks Lester to tell more about himself. Lester says that people think that Lester killed his wife and kids, one at a time, even though Lester says he’s not guilty. Lester says his first child was a baby girl who died of sudden infant death syndrome. Lester and his wife had two other kids.
And then, the conversation gets weirder. Lester says that he glimpsed “it” before one of his children died of a broken neck. Lester shows Will a drawing that Lester made of the creature that Lester says he saw. Lester says to Will: “It cares for your kids when you’re not paying attention.” By this point, Will has gotten freaked out by this conversation, so he excuses himself, goes in another room, and calls the police to report that a potentially dangerous man is in his home.
Meanwhile, Sadie has come home, and Will tells her to go to her room because there’s a stranger in the house that Will needs to have removed. Will goes back in his office, but Lester isn’t there. A frantic Will searches for Lester in the house. Sadie hears noises that sound like two people are fighting in her bedroom. When she looks in her bedroom closet, she sees Will dead, from an apparent suicide by hanging.
None of this is really spoiler information, because the main things that keep happening in “The Boogeyman” movie are typical “shadows and bumps in the night” scenarios, where Sadie and Sawyer are in dark or barely lit rooms (apparently, the Harper family doesn’t know the meaning of having good overhead lighting), where they hear or see something strange, but when they investigate further, it appears to be nothing but their imagination. When Sawyer and Sadie tell Will, he doesn’t believe them.
Sawyer has a glowing orb that’s the size of a bowling ball, which she uses as lighting in a dark room, instead of doing what most kids would do if they’re frightened in a dark room: Turn on a room light. But no, Sawyer doesn’t do that. Instead, she rolls this glowing orb on the floor, like she’s a paranormal bowler, but with no bowling pins.
And predictably, wherever the orb stops on the floor, you know it’s going to be right where something “scary” is. Seriously, this glowing orb is not even remotely believable as a toy that most 10-year-old girls would want to have, let alone use as a way to see in a dark room. It’s one of the many phony-looking things about “The Boogeyman,” which lumbers along at a glacial pace and fills up a lot of time showing scenes of mopey Sadie being a social outsider at her school.
As already revealed in the movie’s trailer, when Dr. Lester does some strobe-light therapy on Sadie and Sawyer, the girls both see The Boogeyman, but Dr. Lester doesn’t see this creature. The strobe-light therapy looks like a very questionable thing for a therapist to do to emotionally fragile children. There are long stretches of the movie where Will is not seen at all in the Harper household, even though he works from home. Will’s absence is never explained. It’s just more of this movie’s phoniness on display.
There’s a subplot in “The Boogeyman” about Sadie being an amateur sleuth to find out more about Lester, which leads to some not-scary-at-all flashbacks/visions involving Lester’s wife Rita Billings (played by Marin Ireland). A better movie would have had the creepy character of Lester in a lot more scenes, instead of killing him off so early in the movie. The performances in “The Boogeyman” aren’t terrible, but they aren’t anything special, and they certainly don’t do much to elevate this very drab and slow-paced movie.
“The Boogeyman” was originally going to be released directly to Hulu (and other Disney-owned streaming services outside the U.S.), but those plans were changed after horror movies such as Paramount Pictures’ “Smile” and 20th Century Pictures’ “Barbarian” became hits in movie theaters in 2022, after these horror flicks were originally planned to be released as direct-to-streaming movies. (20th Century Pictures, the theatrical distributor of “The Boogeyman,” is owned by Disney.) “The Boogeyman” might satisfy viewers who want the most basic, run-of-the-mill horror movie that’s mild on scares. But considering how the movie’s ending is such an inferior (and overly formulaic) departure from the original short story, “The Boogeyman” will just leave a lot of viewers feeling disappointed instead of satisfyingly terrified.
20th Century Pictures will release “The Boogeyman” in U.S. cinemas on June 2, 2023.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Colfax, Illinois, the mystery drama “When the Streetlights Go On” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the middle-class.
Culture Clash: An African American man tells the story of the year he was 15, when two sisters from his high school were murdered within six months of each other.
Culture Audience: “When the Streetlights Go On” will appeal to people who like “mature audience”-level stories about teenagers and don’t mind if the stories have a lot of formulaic clichés.
Sam Strike and Sophie Thatcher in “When the Streetlights Go On” (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 installments that look like episodes. One of the original movies that was part of Quibi’s launch is “When the Streetlights Go On,” a mystery drama about a man who tells the story about what happened in the year that he was 15 years old, when two sisters from a prominent family were murdered within six months of each other, beginning in the summer of 1995.
“When the Streetlights Go On” is narrated by a man named Charlie Chambers, but the entire story is told as a flashback to 1995, in the suburb of Colfax, Illinois, which was devastated by the murders of Chrissy Monroe (played by Kristine Froseth) and her younger sister Becky Monroe (played by Sophie Thatcher). Charlie is seen in “When the Streetlights Go On” only as his 15-year-old self (played by Chosen Jacobs), as the story unfolds from his perspective.
Chrissy was the sister who was murdered first, and her brutal slaying is shown in the first installment of “When the Streetlights Go On.” A popular high-school student, Chrissy also had a big secret: She was having an affair with her married teacher Steve Carpenter (played by Mark Duplass). Steve is so besotted with Chrissy that he tells her that he’s going to leave his wife for her. One night, while Chrissy and Steve meet in the woods for a tryst in his car, they are ambushed by a man armed with a gun and wearing a ski mask.
The masked man orders Steve to drive all three of them further into the woods, where he orders Steve and Chrissy to strip to their underwear before he shoots both of them in the head. The double homicide has stunned and terrified the community. And it’s at the forefront of the local high school’s gossip when school resumes in the fall, because the murderer hasn’t been caught yet. (“When the Streetlight Goes On” has some violence and language that don’t make it suitable for very young or very sensitive viewers.)
Heading the homicide investigation is Detective Darlene Grasso (played by Queen Latifah), who is a very by-the-numbers generic cop character that has been done many times before in TV shows and movies. Charlie, who’s a writer/reporter for the school’s newspaper, seems himself as an aspiring investigative journalist, so he asks to be assigned the story of investigating Chrissy’s murder.
Meanwhile, all eyes at the school are on Chrissy’s younger sister Becky, who is the opposite of Chrissy. Becky is quiet, withdrawn and one of those “quirky” creative types who doesn’t make friends easily. People feel sympathy for her but they also feel awkward around her because they don’t know what to say to her about her tragic loss. And a creepy thing happens when the murderer calls Chrissy’s phone number (which hadn’t been disconnected yet after she died), to apparently taunt the Monroe family and the authorities.
During the course of the story, two very different young men fall under suspicion for murdering Chrissy. One of the possible suspects is Brad Kirchoff (played by Ben Ahlers), who was Chrissy’s high-school boyfriend while she was also secretly having an affair with Steve Carpenter. There’s speculation that Brad (who’s a popular but very arrogant guy) might have found out about the affair, and murdered Chrissy and Steve out of jealousy and revenge. It doesn’t help Brad look innocent when he admits that he and Chrissy argued shortly before she was murdered.
The other young man who gets a lot of scrutiny is Casper Tatum (played by Sam Strike), a rebellious delinquent with an arrest record and a drug problem. Casper is a student who’s slightly older than high-school age because his failing grades have prevented him from graduating from high school with his original class. Because he’s over 18 and doesn’t seem to have any parental supervision, he has a lot more freedom than other students at the high school.
Because of Casper’s hoodlum reputation, more people in the community think that he’s the murderer than those who think Brad is the one who’s guilty. Casper has a massive crush on Becky, but he thinks he has no chance with her, because even if he weren’t under a cloud of suspicion for murdering her sister, Becky would still be considered out of Casper’s league. But Casper soon learns that Becky has a crush on him too, and they begin dating each other.
Casper and Becky’s relationship is a major scandal in the community. Becky ignores the orders of her parents (played by Cameron Bancroft and Eliza Norbury) to stop seeing Casper. One of the people who is the most offended by this romance is Brad, who thinks Becky is being disrespectful of Chrissy’s memory by dating someone whom a lot of people in the community think is the one who murdered Chrissy.
Needless to say, Brad isn’t shy about telling people that he thinks Casper is the murderer. Brad gets so angry at Becky that he curses her out and physically assaults her at school. Brad later apologizes to Becky, but when Casper hears about the assault, that leads Casper and Brad to have a major brawl at a house party attended by several of the students. It seems like every TV show or movie that’s centered on a high school has to show at least one big fight among students.
Meanwhile, Becky and Charlie become friends, as they bond over their mutual love of reading the same type of literature. You know where this is going: Charlie starts to fall for Becky too. And because Charlie is distracted by his feelings for Becky, it leads to him losing some interest in investigating Chrissy’s murder.
“When the Streetlights Go On” starts off promising, but it rapidly goes downhill when it starts to focus on Charlie falling in love with Becky. What happened to the murder mystery? It takes a back seat in the story after Charlie tries to get Becky to fall in love with him.
The acting in “When the Streetlights Go On” isn’t very remarkable, except for Thatcher, who gives a standout performance as the troubled and complicated Becky. And this story from screenwriters Chris Hutton and Eddie O’Keefe needed a lot of improvement. For example, it would’ve been better to not tell viewers up front that Becky would be murdered too.
When Becky’s death happens at the end, it’s not shocking because viewers know it’s coming. And when the murderer is finally revealed, how this reveal is handled is very rushed and almost like an afterthought. If you want to see yet another story about an angst-ridden teenage love triangle, then “When Streetlights Go On” might not disappoint you. But if you’re looking for a compelling drama about solving a murder mystery, then this isn’t that story.
Quibi premiered “When the Streetlights Go On” in 10 chapters, with the first three chapters debuting on April 6, 2020.
