Amanda Arcuri | Through the Shattered Lens

What a disturbing movie!

2019’s Do Not Reply is about Chelsea (Amanda Arcui, who previously played Lola during the final seasons of Degrassi), a high school student who is super-excited to have found an online boyfriend. Brad (Jackson Rathbone) seems like he’s funny, handsome, and charming and he’s even got a semi-tragic life story! Now, it should be mentioned that there are some immediate red flags about Brad. Brad seems to be just a bit too perfect and the story of his life — being adopted and having parents who won’t even spend the money necessary to get him a new phone — seems to be a little bit too on-the-nose as far as getting Chelsea to feel sorry for him is concerned.

Brad and Chelsea agree to go to the Halloween dance together. Brad says that he’ll show up as a zombie football player and he requests that Chelsea show up dressed a cheerleader. (RED FLAG! RED FLAG!) To the surprise of no one, Chelsea meets up with Brad at the dance and is promptly kidnapped.

Brad, it turns out, is not a teenager with parents who refuse to buy him a new phone. Instead, he’s a man in his 20s who lives in a surprisingly nice house. He’s been meeting and kidnapping teenager girls for a while. He holds them prisoner in his house, requiring that they wear cheerleader uniforms while cleaning the place. Brad wants the house to be spotless. He wants his prisoners to adore him. He wants them to be very polite and well-mannered whenever they eat the dinners that he prepares for them. One girl who tried to escape was several beaten by Brad and locked in her room, where she suffers as a warning to the others. Meagan (Kerri Medders) and Heather (Elisa Luthman) both seem to be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome and they not only go out of their way to keep Brad happy but also to keep Chelsea from trying to escape.

If he’s in a good mood, Brad rewards his prisoners with “outdoor time,” which means that he allows them to wear a VR headset and visit an imaginary park. Brad spends most of his day wearing his headset, not only searching for new realities but also reliving all of the terrible things he did in the past. Brad is one sick man, his madness apparently inspired by his incestuous feelings towards his deceased sister who was — wait for it — a cheerleader!

The premise is a disturbing one, precisely because it is based on reality. There are internet stalkers out there and there have been internet murderers as well. Most of them aren’t as wealthy or handsome as Brad but they’re still out there, preying on those who are too naive to question their intentions. While there’s definitely more than a small element of exploitation to the film (with the camera tending to linger over the cheerleader uniforms almost as intensely as Brad does), the film is ultimately on the side of Brad’s prisoners. As opposed to the hyperarticulate madmen who tend to populate films like this, Brad is a loser from the start and the moment when his victims finally start to get the upper hand on him is a cheer-worthy moment. Though the film gets off to a rather slow start, Amanda Arcuri, Kerri Medders, and Elisa Luthman all give good performances. It’s a flawed film but it gets the job done.

(For the past three weeks, Lisa Marie has been in the process of reviewing 56 back to school films! She’s promised the rest of the TSL staff that this project will finally wrap up by the end of Monday, so that she can devote her time to helping to prepare the site for its annual October horror month! Will she make it or will she fail, lose her administrator privileges, and end up writing listicles for Buzzfeed? Keep reading the site to find out!)

Much as in the case of my reviews of School’s Out, Degrassi Goes Hollywood, and Degrassi Takes Manhattan, this review of 2015’s Degrassi: Don’t Look Back is probably not going to make much sense to you if you’re not a huge fan of Degrassi. Then again, it’s possible that it won’t make sense even if you’ve seen every episode of Degrassi.

Among the Degrassi fandom, there’s actually a very passionate debate as to whether or not Don’t Look Back should even be considered canonical. It premiered at the end of season 14, following the graduation episode. Season 14 was also the last season of Degrassi to be broadcast on TeenNick. (The series has subsquently moved to Netflix). Some people don’t consider Netflix Degrassi to be the same as TeenNick Degrassi and since Don’t Look Back is mostly concerned with laying the foundation for Netflix Degrassi, there’s a tendency among some to treat Don’t Look Back as almost being fan fiction.

Admittedly, Don’t Look Back does definitely feel different from the other Degrassi films. It’s much more light-hearted, with a good deal of the film’s 87 minute running time devoted to parodying different horror films. (It’s almost as if Don’t Look Back, which premiered in August, was actually conceived with an October premiere in mind.)

The film, which takes place during the summer, follows five storylines, four of which are pretty typical of what you’d expect to see on Degrassi. Rich girl Frankie Hollingsworth (Sara Waisglass) gets an internship at Toronto’s city hall and has to prove to her coworkers that she’s not just a spoiled brat while, at the same time, resisting the temptation to cheat on her boyfriend, Winston (Andre Kim). Zoe (Ana Golja) attends summer school and finds herself attracted to her classmate, the acerbic Grace (Nikki Gould). (As fans of Netflix Degrassi know, Zoe would eventually accept that she was a lesbian while Grace shocked everyone by revealing that she was both straight and seriously ill.) Tristan Milligan (Lyle Lettau) obsesses over both his dreams of internet stardom and his former boyfriend, Miles. Maya (Olivia Scriven) gets a job as a nanny for a rock star (Sonia Dhillon Tully) and Zig (Ricardo Hoyos) gets mad because he feels neglected.

But then, there’s the fifth subplot and here’s where things get controversial. A minor Degrassi character, Gloria Chin (Nicole Samantha Huff), vanishes and soon, everyone in Canada is searching for her. Fortunately, Grade 10 students of Degrassi Community School are able to use their amazing computer skills and deductive reasoning to figure out where Grace is being held. It’s one of those weird things that you expect to see in an episode of something like CSI or NCIS or some other show with initials for a title. It’s not really something you would expect to see on Degrassi. It feels definitely out-of-place as a part of a franchise that has always prided itself on realistically and honestly exploring teen issues.

But then again, after 14 seasons (and that’s not even including the two series that came before Degrassi: The Next Generation), both the format and tone of Degrassi have changed several times. That’s the way it’s always been. Seasons 1 & 2 of Degrassi have a completely different feel from seasons 3 & 4. And, ultimately, I guess the idea of a bunch of tenners solving a crime is not any stranger than Kevin Smith shooting Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh? at the school.

Anyway, if you’re a Degrassi fan, Don’t Look Back is entertaining enough. And yes, it is canonical. Even if they’ve never mentioned since that they solved the Canadian crime of the century (and does seem like something that would occasionally come up in conversation), apparently that’s what the students at Degrassi did during their summer vacation.

Good for them!