Cario (Jenna Ortega) is a disaffected senior in high school, bored because even the advanced classes are not enough for her. She does enjoy, however, her creative writing class which she shares with her best friend, Winnie (Gideon Adlon), not so much for the curriculum but because she is dangerously enamored with the teacher, Mr. Miller (Martin Freeman). Noticing her brilliance, Mr. Miller begins to give Cario private study and as the semester wanes on, he begins to develop feelings for her as well. When she delivers a sexually charged creative writing assignment to him, he comes to his senses and begins to set up boundaries, but it may be too late, as Cario, scorned, will have her revenge. 

Jade Halley Bartlett attempts to resurrect the erotic thriller with her writing and directorial debut, Miller’s Girl. The film premiered at Palm Springs ahead of its Lionsgate release, and though Freeman lends some credibility to the film as well as the addition of gothic it-girl Ortega, and it also has the gloss and sheen you want for this genre, the truly mindboggling logic – or lack thereof – shown by all the characters makes for a frustrating 93-minute endeavor. 

Setting the stage for us, Ortega narrates how sheltered Cario is, living alone in a mansion left behind by her conveniently permanently abroad parents. Bartlett wastes no time in letting us know that Cario is not like other girls, and she is relentless in framing just how unique she is, saddling Ortega with a rigid script that she struggles to make sense of. Part of this is because none of these characters act like real people and are even too strange to be called caricatures. Winnie is introduced to us with breakfast cravings for “chicky biccy,” and she acts and phrases this in such a way that we wonder if she is going to be a teenage mom. Instead, Bartlett opts for something that we are supposed to feel is equally socially transgressive as we later learn that Winnie is a lesbian, but with her eyes for another of the school faculty, Coach Borris (Bashir Salahuddin), who shares a strange and immature relationship with Miller as the two openly flirt with the students. Winnie later goes on to convince Cario, who is written at once to be prudish but is stylized like a schoolgirl fantasy with the frilly dress shirts and skirts that could be mistaken at first glance as a thick belt, to write her thesis on the psychology behind the attraction between students and teacher relationships. Of course she agrees, and that sets into motion her whole trap to ensnare her writing teacher in a plot that is dangerous given the implications but laughable in its execution as it unfolds on screen. 

The strangeness of the narrative and the characters devolves the film into utter nonsense, and if it is meant to be a comedy, it does not particularly present itself as such. Miller’s Girl wants to be salacious, and while Bartlett has good enough sense to not show Miller and Cario consummate their affair – the most we see is a kiss in the rain and evidence that Cario has at the very least fantasized about him entering her bedroom – she instead relies on Beatrice (Dagmara Dominczyk), Miller’s workaholic wife, to add in some eroticism.  She speaks like she is reading out of a dime-store smut novel, and because those smutty romance novels hold such a prominent place in the narrative, it does not seem like Bartlett is meaningfully lampooning those texts. If anything, she realizes the absurdity of the premises of those stories and is trying to pay homage to it, but the film’s fatal flaw is the statutory nature of the romance being pursued. The film is built to shock and the scenarios are clumsily assembled so that the cast can share outlandish comments with barbed language, but the scenes do not build on each other. Scenes play out more like vignettes as characters leave the scene with a quip and then they are emotionally reset when we see them next, even as their lives get tossed and turned around. 

What is most frustrating about Miller’s Girl is that there are some interesting threads and has the making for a really strong thriller, but it takes the easy route at every turn. A blunt script and direction that seemed to amount to “be funnier,” “be sexier,” “be stranger,” the film relies more on its set decoration (Katie Laxton), costuming (Lauren Bott), and cinematography (Daniel Brothers) to convey its themes than actual nuanced writing. It lays the framework for an examination of relationships with large age gaps and disparity between the power dynamics, but it decidedly tries to romanticize and shock instead. We are constantly told how smart Cario is, and while she may be cunning, there is no depth to her findings as she triumphantly stands on the bed reading her paper aloud to a crying Winnie. She writes an erotic story between her and Miller, and when he does not leave his wife for her, she drops a copy off at the principal’s office. Their relationship is almost immediately realized, and when she questions how Miller holds himself – another neglected thread – it amounts more to flowery words than an actual indictment of entertaining this relationship. Success in literature is a pursuit that almost all of these characters are after; Miller has written a largely ignored collection of short stories, Cario a literary acolyte, and Beatrice an accomplished author who finds the craft more of a pain than a passion. A sharper script would have delved deeper, but all we end up with is punching down on Miller and because every scene begins with that emotional reset, it is a toothless attack. He leaves a scene deeply humiliated, and the next moment he is back to flirting with Cario or trying to engage with his wife who we just saw tear the man to shreds.

Miller’s Girl is a bold swing from a first-time writer/director, and while the story crumbles almost immediately, Bartlett crafts the film with a unified sense of style. Because of the unsavory story elements, the entire aesthetic of that film may feel equally repulsive and is all too easy to write off and ignore, but these decisions are all playing into the style forged by those sweeping romances and erotic thrillers of which the film is either paying tribute to or lampooning. Across the board, the cast is confused about their wildly oscillating characters, but the performances all share the same level of overacting for the cheap seats and leaning into the absurdity that no one seems to think they are in a more serious film than they actually are. If nothing else, Bartlett has proven here that she has a steady hand on the wheel, but unfortunately, the map she had followed was flawed from the start and no amount of expert navigation would lead to anything worthwhile.