Movie Review: 'Miller's Girl' with Jenna Ortega is an airless, cold affair that fails to spark
ABC News
Jenna Ortega’s stark rise as Gen Z’s goth-glam princess takes a pointless, ugly turn in “Miller’s Girl,” a new romantic horror movie about cerebral people that’s simply tiresome, says AP critic Mark Kennedy
Jenna Ortega's stark rise as Gen Z's goth-glam princess takes a pointless, awkward turn in “Miller’s Girl,” a new romantic horror movie about cerebral people that's simply tiresome.
Written and directed by newcomer Jade Halley Bartlett, the movie retells the classic story of a teenage girl smitten by her older teacher and a tumble into seduction. It wants to be close to Vladimir Nabokov, but it's more “Don't Stand So Close to Me” by The Police.
Ortega stars as 18-year-old Tennessee student Cairo Sweet, a precocious and wealthy young lady with a tragic, icy cool personality. “Literature is my solace in the solitude and writing is my only means of escape,” she says, like most 18-year-olds do.
Sweet is the kind of student who reads the long list of suggested texts before school even starts and devours “Finnegans Wake” of her own volition. She has a 4.6 GPA and “crippling ennui." She also dresses like Britney Spears circa “…Baby One More Time.”
Sweet latches onto unmoored literature teacher Jonathan Miller, a former writer — author of “Apostrophes and Ampersands: Six Abysmally Romantic Short Stories” — who hasn't put pen to paper since he got married and started teaching. He's played by a hangdog Martin Freeman, wonderfully anguished and pained.
