Zoey Deutch and Nick Robinson stumble in this mushy, overlong story of a woman leaving voicemails for her dead sister
There’s a fine line between romantic comedy and creepy thriller, and while redefining the genre’s lovelorn leads as often incredibly oddball stalkers is nothing new (see the Sleepless in Seattle trailer recut as a horror movie 20 years ago), an online deluge of memes and thinkpieces have elevated post-movie bar jokes to commonly accepted theory. Some film-makers have slowly tried to catch up and capitalise – last year’s dark comedy I Love You Forever showed how epic acts of romance can be rooted in manipulation while a great deal of what makes current box office record-breaker Obsession so effective is its horror movie perversion of the day-to-day realities of all-consuming true love.
Netflix’s latest romcom Voicemails for Isabelle is made with some awareness of how unsettling its premise is, as if it was originally written in the 2000s and then dusted off and tweaked for the 2020s (the film was originally set to star Hailee Steinfeld back in the 2010s). It’s the story of Jill (Zoey Deutch) who, in the throes of grief for her late sister, starts leaving voicemails on her old phone as a way to feel like she’s still a part of her life. But the number now belongs to a stranger, Wes (Nick Robinson), who decides to not only listen to them but to use the information to track Jill down and insert himself into her life, eventually winning her heart while refusing to be honest about why they’ve met.