You Get Me is a 2017 drama about a young man who during a separation from his girlfriend ends up in the arms of someone else with troubling consequences.
Love changes you. So says a character in this offbeat but predictable thriller that follows a young couple who seems to have it all but lose it in a sweep, a trope of the genre that is one of many You Get Me has in the girl-gone-mad-when-rejected story. It’s an old yarn done probably to its peak in the early 90s but continues to find some footing with updates, and while You Get Me is certainly sexy, stylish and fast-paced, it’s devoid of any real depth or menace, looking pretty but lacking any fun.
It begins with the impossibly good-looking couple of Tyler Hanson (Taylor John Smith) and Alison (Halston Sage), southern California high school sweethearts who met six months ago and go about doing young couple things … except sex. She’s wants to go slow (she has her reasons) and while they profess their love, he waits, knowing she is perfect for him. Of course, that all goes awry when they get into a fight at a party after he discovers a truth about her that sends him into the arms of the alluring and mysterious Holly (Bella Thorne) who takes him home to a night of passionate sex and romance, a dream date that interestingly enough, resets everything about how he feels about Alison, realizing she is really the one. Guess how Holly takes the news.
Directed by Brent Bonacorso, You Get Me is a competently-made movie that aims squarely at a specific audience and dares not to tempt fate and veer even an inch off the well-worn track, in fact riding so heavily on them it nearly gets stuck in the ruts. Contrived to a degree, the film moves fast, perhaps understanding that we already know where its got to go so gets there as quickly as it can, having Tyler and Holly meet and have sex before we have really even gotten to feel any sense of commitment between he and Alison. Holly then goes right off the deep end and takes to ingratiating herself into their lives in such obvious fashion, it seems impossible that Alison doesn’t get what happened in the first few minutes.
Things escalate of course as Holly takes to violence and cruelty, sitting and sneering with a wicked grin on her face the whole time and the film continually plays into that, providing her with opportunities to be malicious while somehow manipulating Alison into believing she is an innocent, every one of them cliché. And cliché is the name of the game, with one doled out after another. When Holly shows up at Tyler’s house, sitting in the kitchen with Tyler’s little sister, it’s a moment so overdone in other movies, it nearly incites a giggle, if it weren’t so overwrought. Admittedly though, Thorne does make a beautiful and deliciously devious villain.
With characters in the story only 17-year-old high school students, it all feels like a game of dress up, each feeling way too young to be caught up in the mess they are, but perhaps that could all be forgiven if it weren’t for the general aimlessness of it all, a perfuctory obligation that fails to truly give it any momentum. Bonacorso finds plenty of ways to ramp up the sexuality though avoids any actual nudity or sex, keeping these beautiful and talented actors in a good light, but there’s no fun in the process. Never as dark as it could be, it’s all just too clean and neat to be convincing.