Casting is everything. Just look at Oh, Hi!, a finger-on-the-pulse comedy about the vagaries of dating in whatever it is we’re calling our current blighted era. To play two twentysomethings on a romantic weekend trip that hits a snag, Oh, Hi! writer/director Sophie Brooks smartly tapped sweet-faced former child actor Logan Lerman (from the Percy Jackson movies and The Perks of Being a Wallflower) and Molly Gordon, a magnificently browed quiet storm of charisma who broke out on The Bear as Carmy’s childhood crush. Lerman and Gordon are magnetic performers, both together and solo, and that is essential, because if you strip out the performances and just focus on what actually transpires over this weekend at a country house, you’d swear you were watching a horror movie.
It’s Isaac and Iris’ first trip together following a few months of dating. They’re still in that magical early flush, hot for each other and notching new firsts. On the drive up, Iris notices when Isaac takes a call from his mother (good sign) and casually mentions Iris, suggesting he’s already introduced the topic of her to Mom (even better sign). The country house they’ve rented is bucolic; after a boozy dinner (Isaac makes them scallops), unlocking new levels of intimacy, they find the home owner’s sex toy closet and decide to fool around with some handcuffs … and this is when Isaac and Iris discover they are very much not on the same page.
The trailer gives away what happens next – and the film actually starts in the future, with Iris summoning her best friend to the house with a doomy “I did something bad” – but consider yourself warned. All post-coital blissed-out, Iris offhandedly refers to the two as a couple, a term Isaac, still handcuffed to the bed, gently but firmly rejects. They never agreed to be exclusive, he says, and that’s not something he’s looking for right now. Stunned, Iris walks away from the bedroom without uncuffing him, and as the night progresses, she finds more reasons to not set Isaac free. In fact, she argues, with his undivided attention she might even be able to convince him they’re perfect for each other.
Brooks – who conceived the story idea with Gordon, who also produces – takes aim at the unique challenges of dating circa right now, with its preponderance of shallow-end feminist fuckboys and the pressure on women to be at once extremely chill and extremely hot; Iris’ snap belongs on the same continuum as Gone Girl’s “Cool Girl” cri de coeur. The shots do land, but softly, and start to feel beside the point. The arrival of Iris’ best friend and her boyfriend (played by Blockers’ Geraldine Viswanathan and Search Party’s John Reynolds – reliable comic relief, the both of them) spins the film even more firmly into broad comedy. Oh, Hi! has plenty to say but is too tenderhearted for satire, and won’t admit to the inarguably psychotic behavior of its heroine to pursue the horror path Misery forged decades prior. There are worse accusations to hurl at a filmmaker than that she has too much empathy for her characters, but in the case of Oh, Hi!, it stymies the potential in its provocative premise and holds a pretty good movie back from greatness.
This article appears in July 25 • 2025.
