When is a good time to tell your girlfriend that you’re just not that into her? Oh, Hi! suggests it probably isn’t when you’re in the middle of a light bondage session and you’re handcuffed to a bed.
Yup. Stoopid. That’s the scenario that director Sophie Brooks and star Molly Gordon dreamt up while they were also in something of a handcuff situation – locked down during Covid – and they work it for all its worth in this larky, darkish dramedy at its best when it takes risks.
Gordon you may know from being the on/off girlfriend of main man Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) in TV show The Bear. She’s playing a fairly similar character here – sharp, savvy, sexy – while opposite her, as the idiot who says the wrong thing at the wrong time, is Logan Lerman, as ever fighting the charge of being a touch too vanilla. Being handcuffed to a bed suits.
So, anyway, Iris and Isaac have gone away to a cabin in the woods for a sexy weekend, where she’s opened the cupboard marked “do not open” and found a ball gag, cuffs and other bits of S&M paraphernalia. Soon they’re going at it like a couple in the early stages of a relationship who’ve gone away to a cabin in the woods for the weekend. She’s thinking this weekend is the gateway to him knocking the relationship up a gear; he’s probably just thinking about her tits.
How long does consent last? If you agree to be handcuffed to the bed, isn’t not being released when you want to be part of the deal? It’s an idea that is dealt with in the most cursory way and things in any case have soon escalated. Iris locks Isaac to the bed, he wants to be released and she doesn’t uncuff him. Before very long it’s all gone beyond the point where releasing him means things can go back to the way they were before. What’s a girl to do? Ultimately, of course, she’s going to have to kill him, isn’t she? Or else face a jail term for some sort of unlawful imprisonment?
Misery in a cabin? Kind of, and just like James Caan and Cathy Bates all those years ago, we’ve worked out that Isaac is in a bad place a good while before he has.
Gordon and Lerman act off each other just like a couple who haven’t got to the commitment stage might do – awkwardly. Whether that’s just bad vibes or not I don’t know. As writers Gordon and Brooks have come up with this lovely opening scenario, and they know where they ultimately want to end up. There’s a lot of dead air to fill in between starting and finishing position.
Enter Geraldine Viswanathan as Iris’s bestie and John Reynolds as her boyfriend. They help to fill in some of that space. With, among other things, a discussion about male types – fuckboys and softboys, the former players, the latter emotional drains who want all the benefits of a good relationship without the commitment. With a fuckboy you know what you’re getting; a softboy never lets on. Guess which one Isaac is?
Followed by a desperate plot turn involving magic potions and the like. Talk about crunching gears.
This isn’t a conventional romcom but it is in that territory with Viswanathan and Reynolds playing the “shadow couple” you often get in a romcom, except here they’re required to busk like crazy until it’s a wrap. Viswanathan, yet again, is perfect – that girl can really act. Reynolds is pretty good too, though he’s got to do much of the heavy vamping and it’s not his fault if it all feels a bit like waiting for the cavalry to turn up.
Never mind Isaac, is the film going to make it? It’s anxiety inducing.
Oh, Hi! – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
