“Luckiest Girl Alive”- Netflix Film Review
The opening voiceover from Ani (Mila Kunis) feels like it was lifted from the infamous Cool Girl Monologue in Gone Girl. Ani has made herself out to be the Coolest Girl so she can hide dark mysteries from her childhood. She’s the survivor of a shooting at a private school that was the deadliest in American history. It’s a past she’s running from, but one that’s being dragged back into the spotlight by documentary filmmaker Aaron (Dalmar Abuzeid).
Luckiest Girl Alive is adapted from the 2015 book of the same name. The screenplay was written by Jessica Knoll, the author of the original novel, and it’s apparent that Knoll might be too close to the source material to effectively adapt it for the screen. The film relies heavily on voiceover and the internal stream of consciousness of Ani. The novel is written in first-person narrative, and those internal ruminations work well when they are words on a page. What makes film such an exciting medium is that it tells its story through moving pictures. The audience is able to understand emotions and plot without any of the characters uttering a single word. Unfortunately, Ani spends her time dictating her emotions so the audience isn’t required to put any thought into the film.
This format speaks to a larger issue with Netflix movies, where the sheer number of original films seems to matter more than the films themselves. The Gray Man, Red Notice, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, and so many more. They’re movies that will top the list of Most Watched for a weekend or two, then fade from the collective consciousness. These films have to be accessible and universal to appeal to the widest possible audience. In doing so, nuance is lost, critical thinking is nonexistent, and the end result is forgettable.
Throughout Luckiest Girl Alive, Ani talks about how she doesn’t want to participate in the documentary that details her experience at the school shooting because she thinks it’s salacious. However, the film takes a somewhat flippant attitude toward Ani’s trauma. It throws distressing life events at her as a means of adding “depth” to Ani’s existence. The film almost revels in the extent of the sexual assault she lived through as a teen. It’s becoming more and more difficult to justify the camera lingering in these moments, especially when they seem to be included simply to shock the audience. Ani’s mental health is never meaningfully discussed, nor are the events of her past dredged up for anything other than salaciousness.
Luckiest Girl Alive feels like the product of a bygone era. There are so many “jokes” about how Ani needs to eat carbs and how she’s starving herself to fit an outdated image of beauty. The portrayals of trauma and abuse are dismal, reminiscent of a time when society talked about these things in a simpler way. When films could brush so many things under the rug and vaguely allude to grand statements about the state of the world, rather than digging deeper into the state of people’s lives. Luckiest Girl Alive is able to tie everything up with a neat bow at the end because nothing was ever unpacked to begin with. This latest Netflix Original is sensationalized trauma packaged neatly for the true-crime-obsessed crowd.
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