HARLEM FF REVIEW: Sarah Pirozek’s #LIKE Is a Stephen King-Like Mash-Up of Nostalgia and Torture

On the anniversary of her late sister’s birthday, high school senior Rosie (Sarah Rich) decides to avenge her suicide by capturing the anonymous online troll who bullied her into it. She has a handful of circumstantial evidence that it’s a local handyman (Ozark‘s Marc Menchaca) – he has similar speech patterns and taste in music, he owns a dreamcatcher like the ones her sister made, and he creepily takes pictures of strangers. So she drugs him and chains him up in the basement of an abandoned bomb shelter, hoping to elicit the confession that she’s been told is the only way police would ever prosecute.

There’s more than a hint of Stephen King inspiration in writer-director Sarah Pirozek’s feature narrative debut. From a certain point of view, Rosie could be a pint-sized Annie Wilkes from Misery. But she’s also a teen hanging on to the last fleeting moments of high-school glory and recklessness; imagine one of the kids from Stand by Me accidentally becoming the antagonist. Pirozek keeps us very much in Rosie’s perspective: rather than a Saw-like claustrophobia that lingers on the victim, she takes breaks as we take them with her, taking naps, going on a moonlit date, and other diversions that remove her mind and sight from the prisoner downstairs. Who may or may not be actually guilty.

Reconciling the two tones – that of the wistful last summer drama and the torture-deathtrap horror – is tricky, and not necessarily as marketable as favoring one over the other. But that’s a problem for the bean counters; creatively, it’s a risk that pays off, and captures the mood swings of a not-yet adult who rarely doubts her own moment to moment impulses. We never forget that the sadness over her sister is a more dominant condition than the anger at her captive. Or that she needs moments of happiness as well as catharsis.

Relative newcomer Rich has to carry all of this on her shoulders, though she’s amply abetted by gorgeously crisp countryside cinematography by Brian Jackson. And she’s quite a find – like Eighth Grade‘s Elsie Fisher, she coveys a character who longs to be the lead actress in her own story, but as yet refreshingly lacks the excessive self-awareness so many teen stars convey. Menchaca gives her plenty to play off of, withholding just enough to keep us guessing whether he’s truly a villain or victim.

Because the movie doesn’t want to give us easy answers, a late-breaking plot twist doesn’t entirely land, as it feels designed for a more conventional payoff. #Like‘s biggest strength, conversely, is that the more the characters dig in their heels, the less we know how this can possibly resolve. And like many Stephen King books, it may not please everyone in doing so. But in keeping with the central story ambiguity, that particular “will it or won’t it” factor is part of what’s likely to hook the viewer.

While I presume the setting of Woodstock was for convenience of shooting, the fact that it’s name-checked in the official synopsis feels significant. Here’s a place we know from the zeitgeist as the site of a massive social gathering that brought a generation together, and here and now we see it as a virtually empty small town. What better metaphor for the social media that, in this tale, destroyed Rosie’s sister? We imagine it as a community to connect with the like-minded, and find instead a venue that might actually be the most isolating of all.