There’s a lot going on in this troubled-girl-on-a-journey story, which recalls the late-’90s proliferation of books like Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation and Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted.
Brittany Snow’s directing debut doesn’t so much add to that canon as dust it down a bit for a new generation, and its success is mostly attributable to its empathetic star Courtney Eaton — the deserving winner of a SXSW Special Jury Recognition for Performance — whose low-key work anchors a needlessly busy film that never quite settles down.
A lot is packed into the opening salvo, from the moment we see Riley (Eaton) sitting on the curb outside a forbiddingly nondescript building, scrolling through pages and pages of narcissistic Instagram influencers.
It will come as no surprise when we find out, shortly after that, that she’s been in for a fairly serious disorder she’ll describe variously as “an eating thing” and “body stuff”, but that doesn’t stop her best friend from insisting they go out for a mutual’s party night.
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