Their first romantic weekend getaway as a couple goes awry. Convinced she’s met her perfect guy and that he’s just confused, she goes to irrational lengths to prove to him that they are meant to be together. A film by Sophie Brooks, starring Molly Gordon, Logan Lerman, Geraldine Viswanathan, John Reynolds, David Cross, Polly Draper, Desmin Borges, Diana Irvine, and Jimmy Gary Jr.
Oh, Hi!
Sophie Brooks
(2025)
Directed by Sophie Brooks, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Molly Gordon, “Oh, Hi!” begins with a clever premise for a romantic comedy: a young couple’s idyllic weekend getaway in the countryside takes an unexpected turn.
While Logan Lerman and Molly Gordon deliver charming performances as Isaac and Iris in the first 20 minutes, the film quickly goes off the rails. The script is plagued by illogical decisions and inconsistent character behaviors that become increasingly obnoxious.
The trouble begins when Isaac, after some intimate bondage play that leaves him chained to the bed, confesses he doesn’t share Iris’s feelings about commitment and their relationship’s future. Iris breaks down emotionally, unable to accept this reality.
Instead of letting him go, she calls her mother (Polly Draper) for advice. Her mother tells her not to give up on him, asserting that sometimes men don’t know what’s best for them. Iris returns to the bedroom to find Isaac asleep, so she goes downstairs and googles “how to get a guy to realize he wants to be with you.” She eventually discovers an article by relationship expert Sarah James.
The next morning, Iris explains to Isaac that according to Sarah James’s theory, they need to stay in the room to work through their conflict. She asks Isaac to remain tied to the bed for 12 hours so she can show him what they could be. She promises that if he still doesn’t want to be with her after the time is up, she will accept his decision.
When Isaac refuses and demands to be uncuffed, Iris jokingly threatens that if she releases him, she’ll have to stab him instead. Alarmed by what seems like genuine instability, Isaac reluctantly agrees to participate in Iris’s misguided experiment.
The writers seem to be struggling with Iris’s character arc. They can’t decide if she should go completely unhinged, which could have steered the film into a dark and twisted comedy. Instead, they try to keep her likable, leaving her character in an awkward middle ground that fails to commit to either a “good” or “evil” path. As a result, the dialogue between Iris and Isaac becomes repetitive and tiresome. While the film invests a lot of time in Iris’s backstory, it offers very little insight into Isaac.
The movie should have ended around the 43-minute mark, right when the promised 12 hours are up and Iris is about to uncuff Isaac. But then Isaac does something completely baffling. Instead of playing it smart and lying his way to freedom, he actually tells Iris he’s still not sure they should be together. When she refuses to release him, he loses his temper and calls her a “psycho,” threatening to send her to jail for kidnapping. What exactly is his endgame here? Why does Isaac act like a silly child?
Things get interesting when Iris’s best friend Max (Geraldine Viswanathan) shows up with her boyfriend Kenny (John Reynolds). Both characters are wonderfully quirky and unpredictable, especially when Max claims her cousin is literally a witch and can make Isaac forget the past two days.
I briefly hoped the film might lean into full supernatural weirdness, which could have been the wild card needed to save this mess. Unfortunately, it doesn’t commit to that direction either. Even two fantastic supporting characters can’t rescue this movie from itself.
“Oh, Hi!” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 26 January 2025. The film had a limited theatrical release in the United States on 25 July.
