Dying to see a truly terrifying movie this fall season? Instead of “Black Phone 2” and Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” try Josh Boone’s “Regretting You,” based on the Colleen Hoover novel of the same name. This horrific film trades knives and jump scares for dreadful clichés and a lost plot.
No one goes to a Colleen Hoover adaptation to see an artful melodrama, but “Regretting You” fails even to fulfill the low expectations of a mindless rom-com. Joining the exciting lineup of movies this fall, “Regretting You” released Oct. 24 and looked to be thrilling, light-hearted fun. Instead, its weak storyline and bland characters highlight the alarming problems of modern, fast-produced adaptations of viral books. They feel more like money grabs than faithful explorations of deserving stories and its cast highlights a need for non-stereotypical representation of Hollywood’s actors of color.
“Regretting You” centers on mother Morgan (Allison Williams) and daughter Clara Grant (McKenna Grace) and their incredibly stereotypical mother-daughter relationship. After Clara’s father Chris (Scott Eastwood) and her Aunt Jenna (Willa Fitzgerald) get into a car crash, family systems and Clara’s final teenage years are turned upside down. Clara responds to her family members’ deaths by rebelling and losing her virginity to “bad boy” Miller Adams (Mason Thames), while Morgan and her sister’s now widowed husband Jonah, in classic Colleen Hoover fashion, confess their feelings for each other. Yes, it’s a mess, but not in the fun, indulgent manner of reality TV. Somehow, this mess is incredibly predictable, not to mention hastily resolved by lazy character arcs and unbearable dialogue.
Often in film, characters and their actors can redeem a questionable or boring movie plot. “The Breakfast Club,” for example, focuses more on its characters and their relationships than building an exciting narrative. However, “Regretting You” fails at developing either. Each of its characters is a trite stereotype: Clara is a straight-A student who has never smoked, and is an easily embarrassed teenager, while Miller is the “coolest boy at school,” a rebel with a sad backstory, who takes Clara out of her comfort zone. Morgan is the annoying young mother who has forgotten to live for herself.
The characters’ only original trait is how unbearably horny they all are. That is also what drives the entire plot. At the end, every character we see (except for Miller’s grandfather), has conveniently found a new partner and is utterly in love. Originally, Clara and Miller agree to wait until prom to have sex, which seems cute, until she gets mad at her mom for kissing her aunt’s husband, and invites him over to get back at her. All of the characters’ problems and solutions can be traced back to sexual desire. And it’s not surprising, as the novel “Regretting You” was first popularized by a “spice” loving, scandal-rewarding audience.
“Regretting You,” like Colleen Hoover’s “It Ends With Us,” found cult-like success on social media, specifically on “BookTok,” where fans were excited by her outrageous storylines and soapy romances. Even though “It Ends With Us” was accused of glamorizing domestic violence, audiences of all ages looked forward to “Regretting You”, which promised to be campy, dramatic and fun, especially with teen stars Grace and Thames.
While films like “Pride and Prejudice,” “Twilight” and “The Notebook” have proven the enormous profit that can come from romance book adaptations, “Regretting You” presents solely as a cash-grab capitalizing on social media trends. The script has many plot holes, flimsy resolutions and seems to think its audience won’t care. Perhaps “Twilight” can get away with absurdity (it’s about vampires after all), but nothing excuses the carelessness of “Regretting You.”
Within one scene, it is revealed that Miller, who just so happens to want to go to the same college as Clara, has suddenly gotten off the waitlist and no longer needs to worry about tuition or caring for his dying grandfather, an ongoing point of tension as his grandfather, in secret, possesses assets worth $500,000. “Regretting You” seems to have faith in its audience’s stupidity or credulity, and the scary part is, it’s right: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an audience score of 85 percent (as of Nov. 17), from over 500 reviewers. It seems as if the appealing nature of brainless TikTok clips has bled into movies inspired by the app’s trends. What has happened to our understanding of a “good story” if in an age where movies, already more popular than books, are reduced to the dullness of “Regretting You” and subsequently praised?
In addition to its structural issues, “Regretting You” fails at inclusivity. While Asian representation in Hollywood has greatly improved over the past decades, “Regretting You” makes it clear that movies still have a long way to go in terms of accurate representation. While the film is set in Dylan, a fictional North Carolina town that may be predominantly white, the presence of token Asian sidekicks in tandem with a lack of any other racial diversity is particularly alarming.
Both Clara and Miller’s best and only friends are Asian. Clara’s best friend Lexie (Sam Morelos), and Miller’s, Efren (Ethan Costanilla), are incredibly underdeveloped characters, even for this film. Both serve only to hype up the leading white characters, and of course, despite having no chemistry and no relationship built up between them, they fall in love at the end. Lexie’s depiction is especially unsettling; she serves only as comic relief and a vessel through which Clara is able to inform the audience of her feelings. Efran’s nerdy characterization and supporting role isn’t much better; it seems reminiscent of a Hollywood tradition to emasculate Asian men in order to make their white counterparts more attractive.
Overall, Boone’s adaptation is more appalling than entertaining. Besides the red flags it raises about society’s expectations of the media, “Regretting You” fails at the two most basic elements of a film: plot and character development. Unless you’re looking for an awkward, unsettling window into the quality of popular media and romance films this season, you’re better off rewatching a fall favorite. Even then, you may observe something more original and thought-provoking than anything presented in “Regretting You.”
