THE CAST – Adam Scott, Danielle Deadwyler, Theo Rossi, Kate Berlant, Nazanin Boniadi, Daveed Diggs, Ron Perlman, Colleen Camp & Greg Kinnear

THE TEAM –Kevin Hamedani (Director/Writer) & Travis Betz (Writer)

THE RUNNING TIME – 90 Minutes

Satire, when done right, can be a powerful tool that sharply stings the hearts and minds of everyone who comes across it. That’s the inherent gift of comedy, which can naturally come off as a defense mechanism to cope with or respond to the often nightmarish scenarios we experience in life. Yet, more often than not, there are attempts at satire that come off as grating, preachy, or, more importantly, succeeding in being what all successful satires are… funny. “The Saviors,” unfortunately, falls into the latter, proving to be a misguided misfire that grows increasingly dated as each scene unhumorously unfolds before our eyes, even with Adam Scott and Danielle Deadwyler trying their best to bring it to life.

Kevin Hamedani’s sophomore feature opens with a conception of Americanized normality as Sean (Adam Scott) dreams of a cherished memory: waking up to his wife, Kim (Danielle Deadwyler), in their lovely suburban home, exchanging cutesy banter. This memory quickly fades, becoming a nightmare for Sean and keying in on the audience’s internalized fears that only become rampant for our protagonist. The once-happy-go-lucky couple is, in fact, estranged, having to rent out their guest house through Airbnb to pay their rising mortgage in the wake of Sean’s unemployment. Cue in Amir and Toherb (played by Theo Rossi and Nazanin Boniadi), siblings of Middle Eastern descent renting this guest house for the next eight days, coincidentally in time for the President’s visit to the town where Sean and Kim live. The niceties all but fade as Sean’s paranoia about Amir and Toherb rises from their seemingly anomalous behavior, or at least from Sean’s standards. The clues and lies start piling up as Sean and, eventually, Kim descend into an ill-informed psychosis propping up their foolish hero complexes.

It’s clear that Hamedani’s ambitions focus on dissecting the rampant islamophobia found within Americans, and how that makes for a deadly combination with man’s inherent need to be the hero of one’s own story. Even more so, how these biases transcend race and political party, as Hamedani and co-writer Travis Betz want to point out the bigotry that can break through the liberal facade. The intent is well plastered all over “The Saviors,” yet it’s the failure to land the punchline amid one superficial setup that ultimately makes it a painfully unfunny experience. The style of humor Hamedani and Betz register in is quickly evident to audiences as early as a sequence where Sean’s family dinner blasts off half-hearted jests about Muslims, Jews, and African Americans to showcase the variety of biases everyone has. If it weren’t for Ron Perlman’s comedic timing, there would be little humor about it.

The rare moments of effective comedy often come through Greg Kinnear’s cartoonish private detective, whose on-and-off-again romance with Sean’s soft-launched conservative sister Cleo, played by Kate Berlant, is played up for laughs, especially through his nonsensical dialogue. Kinnear isn’t bogged by any of the heavy lifting in selling the idea that this film also doubles as a thriller, and an ineffective one at that. Hamedani’s direction struggles to sell any of the thriller elements, with a rein on building tension and resorting to cheap scares that only do enough to show he’s eager to mesh genres without the ability to do so. The more “The Saviors” attempts to be serious, the more comical it becomes, especially with the relationship at the heart of the film not fleshed out in a way worth rooting for Sean and Kim’s marriage to survive, even when their twisted sense of coming together is through racial prejudice.

Scott garners some laughs, mainly due to his ability to be an emotive performer in the face of the nonsense spewed at him, especially by Berlant’s Cleo, whose caricature stands out like a sore thumb. Deadwyler, who we never get to see embrace her comedic chops as often (most likely why she was brilliant in the fourth season of “The Bear”), tries to join in on the fun. Yet, the character of Kim is far less of a priority in her dynamic than Scott’s, leaving her on the wayside. Rossi and Boniadi have a tough task to sell audiences on the stereotypes imposed on them. Still, with their characters intentionally clouded by mystery, they’re rarely given the chance to break past how we’re supposed to see them, even if, from the start, it’s all the more obvious they aren’t the embodiment of the harmful projections placed onto them. Credit to Hamedani for a gutsy premise that crumbles not only under a reveal that’s all the more ridiculous, but also under the technical depth that elevates “The Saviors” from anything beyond a baffling concept.

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THE CAST – Sadie Sink, Theo Rossi, Kweku Collins, Jessica Capshaw, Justin Bartha & Vivien Lyra Blair

THE TEAM – Gren Wells (Director), Melissa Martin & Marc Lhormer (Writers)
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THE RUNNING TIME – 94 Minutes

Though Gren Wells’ “Dear Zoe” was filmed over three years ago, it’s only just now seeing the light of day, perhaps as a way to capitalize on the career-defining year star Sadie Sink has had. After first bursting onto the scene in 2017 with the second season of “Stranger Things,” Sink continued to make a massive impression in Netflix’s flagship franchise. She later experienced yet another surge in popularity last fall, leading Taylor Swift’s directorial debut “All Too Well: The Short Film,” alongside “Teen Wolf’s” Dylan O’Brien. However, nothing could have prepared Sink for how terrific her 2022 would be, where she not only starred in the most successful “Stranger Things” season yet (and had one of the most affecting arcs, including an episode almost entirely centered around her emotional growth – “Dear Billy” – that wound up earning her an HCA Award) but also drew raves working with Darren Aronofsky and Brendan Fraser in “The Whale,” a prominent awards player this season that even brought her a bit of attention in the Best Supporting Actress conversation for starring alongside this year’s presumptive Best Actor frontrunner as the depressed daughter he wishes to reconnect with before his death. And now, before “The Whale” reaches its wide release, Sink fans will have “Dear Zoe” to tide them over, which, despite being a bit of a conventional coming-of-age story, features yet another powerhouse performance from one of our most talented rising stars.

When “Dear Zoe” starts, we open in the aftermath of a tremendously traumatic event that no one in the DeNunzio family has recovered from a few months prior; on the day of the September 11 attacks, one of their two youngest daughters, Zoe, lost her life in a hit and run accident. It’s the 15-year-old Tess (Sink), the family’s oldest daughter, who takes this news the hardest, as she was supposed to be watching her sister outside that day but found herself drawn away by the news of the terrorist attacks, and thus left Zoe alone for a moment too long, resulting in this tragedy. As the rest of the family – mother Elly (Jessica Capshaw), stepfather David (Justin Bartha), and youngest sister Emily (Vivien Lyra Blair) – tries to heal, Tess proves repeatedly resistant to change, tanking their attempts at therapy and slowly growing detached from life and those around her over the course of the school year, a process expedited by the revelation that Elly might have been having an affair with a handsome younger worker at their local grocery store, shattering Tess’ image of who her mom really is. Eventually, when all it becomes too much to take, Tess runs away to live with her estranged father Nick (Theo Rossi), a former “troublemaker” who now still lives on “the wrong side of town” but represents an escape for Tess, especially as a parental figure who cares deeply for her in spite of his past pitfalls and isn’t connected to her present emotional crisis. Throughout the summer, the support Tess receives from Nick – and a burgeoning friendship (or romance?) with a local boy named Jimmy (newcomer Kweku Collins) – allow her to learn how to love life again and slowly, but surely, process the pain of Zoe’s passing.

“Dear Zoe,” based on the 2005 novel of the same name (which explains its early aughts setting and aesthetic), is undoubtedly a story told with striking sincerity and sensitivity, approaching solemn subject matter with authentic grace and never seeking to sensationalize its central tragedy in its efforts to explore a teenage girl’s emotional evolution in the wake of unspeakable trauma. However, at the same time, it is also an incredibly conventional coming-of-age story, hitting every cliché and basic thematic beat you’d expect from a story like this and doing little to differentiate itself from several other standout films in this considerably crowded subgenre. Of course, we’ll find that there’s more context to Tess’ family’s feelings than she initially gives them credit for, that Tess’ father isn’t as “clean” as he makes himself out to be at the start, that Tess’ romance will hit a few speed bumps before stabilizing once more on account of her culture clash with Jimmy, and on and on and on. It’s not that the story is poorly told by any means – aside from a few “obvious” lines of dialogue and clumsy expressions of emotion – but merely that we’ve seen it told so many times before, in almost the exact same way. The involvement of the 9/11 attacks as a backdrop to this story’s specific hardship does help it stand out, and the screenwriters (Mark Lhormer and Melissa Martin) tie those terrible events to this film’s central themes in compelling ways, but that can only take “Dear Zoe” so far when the rest of the movie is so rudimentary, and when the production values (notably, the cinematography) feel like more of a fit for a TV film than a theatrical release.

Thankfully, Sink is such a naturally gifted performer that, even though this was shot three years ago and she’s undeniably grown even more as an actress in the time it took for this film to receive a wide release, she still manages to turn in yet another powerful and poignant performance that underscores the fact that she’s one of her generation’s most promising stars on the rise, capable of elevating any and every project with her acute characterization of teenage angst and anguish. You’ll see shades of Max from “Stranger Things” in Tess here, but this is also ultimately a softer – and subtler – role once the initial storminess subsides, which allows Sink to show new range and stretch herself, particularly through her heartwarming romance with the former ruffian Jimmy (and it helps that Kweku Collins also charms, contributing considerably to the cultivation of a credible chemistry between the two). Their emotional progression isn’t perfect – did Tess’ new Black boyfriend from “the other side of town” really have to be the one to introduce her to weed? – but Sink and Collins do the heartfelt heavy lifting to convince us that these two contrasting personalities would be drawn to each other and find comfort in one another as well, and Sink and Rossie are equally effective at expressing this same affecting evolvement. If you watch “Dear Zoe” at all, it’ll likely be for Sink, and thankfully, what you’ll find is another example of one of our best and brightest younger actresses demonstrating her dramatic depth, even when the material around her isn’t as fresh as her deeply felt work.

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