A romantic weekend away gets off to a rough start for Iris (Molly Gordon) and Isaac (Logan Lerman), but once they arrive at the farmhouse rental, they plan to make the best of it and salvage their time together.  That is easier said than done when Iris begins to feel that her love is not being fully reciprocated by her partner. As her anxiety sets in, she becomes more and more desperate to make sure that Isaac is not going to leave her. 

Sophie Brooks writes and directs Oh, Hi!, her sophomore feature effort which premiered at the 2025 edition of the Sundance Film Festival.  Sony Pictures Classics acquired the film after its debut, and gave the 95-minute dark, romantic comedy a limited theatrical release. 

The film opens with a voiceover by Iris who is surprisingly levelheaded when juxtaposed with what she is saying.  It is a phone call to her friend, Max (Geraldine Viswanathan), as she explains in vague terms that things got out of hand, and that she did not mean to do it, all while lights – possibly candles, but definitely fire – twinkle in her eyes.  From there, the story flips back to the proper start and plays out linearly from there safe for a few contextualizing flashbacks.  Starting in media res is an odd choice here for being such a simple narrative, but it sets the foundation for the darker twist that is coming later and helps to frame the story so that even in the second act when things seem to get a little stale, there is the promise of something slightly sinister on the horizon. 

Before any of that, though, audiences must endure a very awkward first act as Iris and Isaac only barely seem to know each other.  This is ultimately a deliberate choice in the writing as we later learn that they are still a very new couple, but with this reveal, Books loses some of the inherent trust that audiences come into a film with.  While she does make sure to reveal pertinent information in due time, she seems to be instructing her cast to act one way while the script, when all is said and done, points another direction.  It is as if she is trying to work in aspects of a thriller into this two-hander, and though she and the cast have not been shy about citing Rob Reiner’s Misery (1990) as an apt inspiration, these characters are not developed enough to support the needs of a third genre. 

It is not a far-off comparison as the couple, one their first night of vacation, decide to experiment with handcuffs and other restraints in bed.  Already overcome with paranoia about their future, Iris decides not to unlock Isaac in the morning creating a parallel with Paul Sheldon (James Caan) and Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) from the Reiner classic.  Helpless and naked for much of the film, Lerman has his work cut out for him to remain an engaging part of the already small-scale film that was originally conceived to be filmed during the early reopening stages of Covid and now has many restrictions placed on his physical performance.  Again, a deeper character on the page would certainly have helped here, but the script does not ultimately have ambitions to really let these actors form full characters as Cann and Bates were afforded, albeit they had the benefit of working on an adaptation of one of Stephen King’s most prolific novels.  An attempt is made with Gordon’s Iris, so much so that the film has the stink of being the product of a writer/director/star, but even still, Oh, Hi! does not seem particularly interested in digging in deep to her, either; rather, just the narrative remains fascinated by her by default. 

Brooks is mostly framing the film as a cautionary tale crossed with an indictment of modern dating, but in the same way that Celine Song stumbled through that same thesis in Materialists (2025) for A24, Brooks is likewise content to frame her argument one-sidedly.  She is not looking to examine so much what draws people to one another, but rather the panic that sets in once a relationship has been formed. None of these characters across both titles have any business being associated with each other and without belief in that catalytic kernel of a relationship, everything that we see coming after it feels false as we never can quite clear that hurdle of acceptance that they actually are committed to nurturing a connection together.  Oddly enough, Michael Shanks will continue to examine these themes through the lens of more traditional horror in Together (2025) from Neon; another 2025 Sundance title creating a coincidental thematic trilogy about love and dating in modern times. Thankfully, though, Brooks had the intuition to keep her film short and sweet, and inject some real humor into the back half of the film – courtesy of the comic timing of both Viswanathan’s Max and her puppy-like boyfriend, Kenny (John Reynolds) – which helps it cross the finish line still in the audience’s good graces.