movie review the luckiest girl alive

Luckiest Girl Alive

It’s been more than two decades since the deadly Columbine high school shooting that shook the world. While these traumatic events continue to happen to the point of ubiquity and a whole generation of kids have grown up in their wake, Hollywood has found in them a new setting for films that deal with lingering high school trauma. It seems for every compassionate, nuanced film like “ The Fallout ,” there’s something exploitative like “ The Desperate Hour .” 

Unfortunately, “Luckiest Girl Alive,” the latest of these films falls in that latter category. Based on the book of the same name by Jessica Knoll , who also serves as screenwriter, the movie not only dramatizes a school shooting in poor taste, it has the gall to use one as the backdrop while it also exploits rape trauma in the name of girl boss feminism.

With a tone ripped directly from “ Gone Girl ,” the film centers on the seemingly perfect life of Ani ( Mila Kunis ), a writer for a glossy women’s magazine named The Woman’s Bible. She’s written “1,500 stories about how to give a blow job” but all she really wants is a job at the New York Times Magazine so she can be “someone people can respect.” Ani is engaged to an old money scion named Luke ( Finn Wittrock , given nothing to do), who is more of a box to check towards Ani’s goal of unquestionable social legitimacy than anything else. 

Her desire to be the most uncontestable rich person stems from her high school days. A scholarship kid at an elite prep school in Philadelphia, Ani, then known as Tiff ( Chiara Aurelia ), is a survivor of the “deadliest private school shooting in U.S. history.” That this shooting took place in 1999 (the same year as Columbine) and the film’s revelation of who the perpetrators were is one of many incredibly tasteless decisions it makes, which is quite a distinction as the whole thing is mostly made up of tasteless decisions. 

Through flashbacks and Ani’s narration (which is haphazardly deployed throughout as her cynical inner thoughts, an interview for a documentary, and the copy for a piece she writes during the film’s denouement), we learn that one of the survivors, now a gun reform activist, claims that Ani was in on the shooting—but also that this same survivor was one of three classmates who gang-raped Ani at a school dance after party just weeks before the shooting. In order to win the he-said-she-said of it all, Ani aims to climb the top of the social ladder, and then share her side of the story.

Despite the luridness of the material and Mike Barker ’s brutal blocking of the rape sequence, Aurelia does a fine job in showing Ani’s pain and resistance during, confusion immediately after, and later hesitation to report due to internalized shame. If only the older Ani played Kunis were given room for as much nuance. Instead, her PTSD is shown as manifesting through hamfisted visions of blood, of stabbing her fiance (whose elite social status continually reminds her of her rapists), and her vitriolic inner thoughts. 

Ani is also, rightfully, angry at her mother Dina ( Connie Britton ) over actions slowly revealed through the flashbacks. However, this anger manifests mostly in jabs at her mother’s lower social class. Ani’s wedding dress is from Saks 5th Avenue (the one on 5th Avenue!), but she makes it clear to her rich friends that her mother shops at T.J. Maxx. Even the film can’t help but poke fun at Dina as she struggles to fit into the upper echelon world her daughter now inhabits, saddling her with comically high heels and lines about “Say Yes to the Dress” and poorly pronounced Italian. 

Her mother’s financial situation is always in the back of Ani’s mind even as a teen, as is her striver’s spirit. Dina’s reasoning for her daughter to attend a private school in the first place was to get her in the room with rich men. When this plan led to her assault, Dina places the blame on Ani for breaking her rules about alcohol. It’s clear the lesson Ani brought into her adulthood is that privileged men will do what they want and get away scot-free, unless she evens the playing field. Where there could have been a critique of class, there is instead still an aspirational desire to be one of the elites. As if only rich men are capable of bad behavior. 

It’s also never clear exactly what kind of writer Ani wanted to be before writing “skanky” stuff, as her boss LoLo ( Jennifer Beals ) calls her beat, at this women’s magazine. Her striving desire to have her writing in an old establishment like the New York Times comes from the same place as wanting to marry into an old family so that people know they don’t just “have money, they came from money.” Again, there’s a missed opportunity to really explore class and power dynamics, but also to explore gender dynamics in the media world beyond a surface level. 

After being sidelined for most of the film, Beals returns and gives Ani a pep talk about “authenticity” and the importance of exposing everyone in her life that didn’t help her as a teenager. This pushes her to finally tell her side of the story in her own words. Ordinarily this moment in a film would feel triumphant, but it’s here you realize “Luckiest Girl Alive” has exploited both school shootings and rape trauma for a self-actualization narrative that ultimately ends with Ani finding value not in the release of her repressed emotions through this writing, but in the shallow achievement of viral fame.

Ani was a victim, sure, but so were all the kids whose lives were lost during the shooting, or were altered forever by the trauma of its aftermath. But the film is so minutely concerned with Ani’s trauma only that it nearly says the deaths of the other kids was justified (it surely relishes in showing their deaths in barbaric detail). The very last scene then positions the trauma of rape victims and those afflicted by gun violence as being in competition with each other for the nation’s attention and actionable change.  

A flashback to a classroom scene where Ani’s sympathetic English teach Mr. Larson (an underused Scoot McNairy ) compliments her analysis of Holden Caulfield as an unreliable narrator suggests the filmmakers want us to view Ani as equally unreliable, having centered herself into this narrative. Does this then mean the film’s narrow viewpoint of competing traumas is solely because it’s presented the events from Ani’s warped point of view? Perhaps, but it doesn’t make its use of a school shooting as a background for her personal journey any less callous. 

On Netflix today.

Marya E. Gates

Marya E. Gates is a freelance film and culture writer based in Los Angeles and Chicago. She studied Comparative Literature at U.C. Berkeley, and also has an overpriced and underused MFA in Film Production. Other bylines include Moviefone, The Playlist, Crooked Marquee, Nerdist, and Vulture. 

• Mila Kunis as Ani FaNelli
• Finn Wittrock as Luke Harrison
• Scoot McNairy as Andrew Larson
• Chiara Aurelia as Young Ani
• Thomas Barbusca as Arthur Finnerman
• Justine Lupe as Nell Rutherford
• Alexandra Beaton as Hilary Hitchinson
• Connie Britton as Dina
• Gage Munroe as Peyton Powell
• Alexandra Beaton as Hilary Hutchinson
• Nicole Huff as Olivia Kaplan

Cinematographer

• Colin Watkinson

Writer (novel)

• Jessica Knoll
• Linda Perry
• Mike Barker
• Nancy Richardson

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‘Luckiest Girl Alive’ Review: Lean In, to Outrage

Mila Kunis plays a successful career woman who faces a horrific incident from her past in this drama based on the novel by Jessica Knoll.

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By Amy Nicholson

To become the “Luckiest Girl Alive,” a title this dramedy shellacs with sarcasm, a self-loathing magazine writer named Ani (Mila Kunis) has achieved a trifecta of status symbols: a prestigious education (acquired via scholarships), a slim body (acquired via an eating disorder), and a posh fiancé (acquired via emotional suppression). Marriage to blue-blooded Luke Harrison IV (Finn Wittrock) will cement her transformation from teenage pushover TifAni FaNelli (played in flashbacks by Chiara Aurelia) to her intimidating new identity as Ani Harrison — that is, if she can restrain herself from fantasizing about stabbing her husband-to-be in the neck.

“Snap out of it, psycho,” Ani growls in the first of many harsh monologues that run the length of the film. Her fanged narration sets us up for a makeover movie in reverse where a carb-fearing perfectionist allows herself to enjoy pizza. In part, it is that movie. But readers of Jessica Knoll’s novel of the same name, which she here adapts for the screen, know that Ani is reeling from a high school gang rape compounded by a mass shooting. These intertwined tragedies rebranded one of Ani’s abusers, played as a student by Carson MacCormac and in adulthood by Alex Barone, into a grandstanding public moralist. At the same time, her own labels make her itch: survivor, victim, villain, hero, slut. Ani wears success like a bulletproof vest, until run-ins with her mother (Connie Britton), her former teacher (Scoot McNairy) and a documentarian (Dalmar Abuzeid) force her to re-examine her facade.

Kunis’s alpha female appears at once ferocious and like a conspicuous sham. (Imagine Sheryl Sandberg as a “Scooby-Doo” villain.) Her performance carries the film — a fortunate break for the director Mike Barker, who has the near-impossible challenge of shepherding the tone from snark to painful sincerity. Too often, Barker resorts to shooting pat scenes of Kunis staring at herself in a mirror. Yet, he and the cinematographer Colin Watkinson also capture Ani’s callous gaze in glimpses, say when a crumb on the corner of Abuzeid’s lip symbolizes her suspicion that she can’t trust this klutz as her mouthpiece.

It’s initially baffling that Knoll pointedly sets the film in 2015, the year her book was published. (What for? A one-liner about Hillary Clinton winning the presidency?) Still, Knoll took another year to speak openly about how Ani’s trauma overlaps with her own, and today, her script serves as a reminder of that recent history right before #MeToo, when strength passed for healing and misogyny hid behind a smile that sneered, Can’t you take a joke ?

“Yes,” Ani might counter — and she’s absorbed so many punch lines that, like the culture at large, she’s poised to explode.

Luckiest Girl Alive Rated R for sexual violence and language. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. Watch on Netflix .

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‘luckiest girl alive’ stars mila kunis in a messy adaptation of jessica knoll’s novel.

“Luckiest Girl Alive” has a lot going on, in a way that undermines the movie’s translation from book to screen. Mila Kunis produces and stars in this #MeToo-tinged story, which awkwardly incorporates a mass school shooting as well as gender and class politics into what becomes an ungainly mix of hot-button issues in one dramatic package.

Kunis plays Ani FaNelli, a have-it-all magazine journalist close to landing her dream job at the New York Times and marrying her wealthy boyfriend Luke (Finn Wittrock), although there’s tension over whether her professional aspirations will have to take a back seat to his higher-paying career.

A documentarian, however, is again asking thorny questions about the school shooting that happened when Ani was attending the prestigious Brentley School, bringing memories flooding back about the sexual assault she experienced there, at the time receiving little support from her social-climbing mother (Connie Britton, reduced to a caricature).

Chiara Aurelia portrays the young Ani, whose ordeal is graphically shown during the steady stream of flashbacks that assail her older self. Those unflinching sequences recall “13 Reasons Why,” another Netflix production built around a high-school rape and pressures on a teen girl to remain silent.

Here, the dilemma about what to say resurfaces for the grownup Ani, especially with one of her attackers having achieved a measure of fame, and fear that speaking out will somehow derail the yellow-brick road to high-society life that looms ahead of her. As the handsomely clueless Luke puts it, why address “this thing that happened to you so long ago.”

As constructed, unfortunately, in an adaptation of the book written by its author, Jessica Knoll, and directed by Mike Barker, “Luckiest Girl Alive” feels as if it’s juggling too many plates – joining the story in progress and laboring to connect the mass shooting to Ani’s story in a way that muddles the mystery. The lack of insight about the true-crime genre that helps drive the narrative – that is, the documentary within the movie – also represents a missed opportunity.

While Kunis and Aurelia convey Ani’s anguish, there’s a stick-figure quality to the supporting players, a roster that includes Jennifer Beals as her hard-charging editor, with the exception of a caring teacher (Scoot McNairy) who comes back into Ani’s life.

On its face, the combination of a high-profile lead, bestselling book and provocative subject matter sounds like the sort of formula that yields dividends for Netflix, and the movie still might. But “Luckiest Girl Alive” falls short of its promise, a reminder that, however ironic the title is intended to be, fortune tends to favor the bold.

“Luckiest Girl Alive” premieres October 7 on Netflix.

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Luckiest Girl Alive

A woman in New York, who seems to have things under control, is faced with a trauma that makes her life unravel. A woman in New York, who seems to have things under control, is faced with a trauma that makes her life unravel. A woman in New York, who seems to have things under control, is faced with a trauma that makes her life unravel.

• Mike Barker
• Jessica Knoll
• Chiara Aurelia
• Finn Wittrock
• 289 User reviews
• 70 Critic reviews
• 54 Metascore
• 2 wins & 3 nominations

Top cast 62

• Ani Fanelli

• Luke Harrison

• Andrew Larson

• Nell Rutherford

• Aaron Wickersham

• Dean Barton

• Lolo Vincent

• Arthur Finnerman

• Peyton Powell
• (as Gage Alexander McIver Munroe)

• Hilary Hutchinson

• Olivia Kaplan

• Beth Fuller

• Mrs. Harrison
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Lionsgate and Pacific Standard - actress Reese Witherspoon and producer Bruna Papandrea 's production company - bought the film rights to Jessica Knoll's debut novel before it had even been published. The rights were secured in April 2015, over a month before the book hit stores.
• Goofs Onscreen headlines show that Ani was in high school in the late 90s. During the flashback to Ani's high school field trip, she makes a note of witnessing a commanding woman walking on the sidewalk talking into her cell phone. This woman is speaking into a flat, rectangular smartphone that wasn't introduced until the first iPhone was released in 2007.

[first lines]

Ani Fanelli : [narrating] It's 2015, and people still act like marriage is some kind of crowing achievement for women. That is a trap that I did not fall into. I dove in head first...

• Crazy credits The title of the movie appears at the very last second of the movie.

User reviews 289

• Phantasma_the_Black
• Oct 6, 2022
• How long is Luckiest Girl Alive? Powered by Alexa
• October 7, 2022 (United States)
• United States
• Official Netflix
• الفتاة الأوفر حظًا
• Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Made Up Stories
• Orchard Farm Productions
• Picturestart
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 53 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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‘Luckiest Girl Alive’ Review: Mila Kunis Is All That Works in a Punishing Thriller That Inflicts Cruelty on Everyone

A successful woman finds it difficult to deal when her tormented past is unearthed in this by-the-book adaptation of Jessica Knoll's 'Gone Girl' knockoff.

By Courtney Howard

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Mirrors reflect who we are, or at least how we want to appear to others. Director Mike Barker ’s “ Luckiest Girl Alive ” uses them as a motif throughout this tale centered on a woman whose pristine, calculated image disguises a mess of insecurities and intense psychological pain. Yet the picture portrayed in author Jessica Knoll’s adaptation of her own novel struggles with its tone, poor character construction and annoying screenwriting contrivances. Utilizing a traditionally glossy, chick-lit-retrofitted heroine as a mouthpiece for somber, serious activist sentiments isn’t so much provocative as just downright batty.

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Barker and Knoll toggle between past and present timelines with little to no ease, perhaps simulating the jarring, jagged edges of the protagonist’s bad memories being unearthed, but this interrupts narrative momentum. Character development, particularly in the cases of Luke, who’s supportive until he’s not, and Ani’s former teacher Mr. Larson (Scoot McNairy), who conveniently appears and disappears, could use a lot more finesse as the filmmakers botch their arcs. Worse, there are scant amounts of sensitivity in the reveal of Ani’s painfully disturbing ordeals. These highly emotional sequences are less riveting and more revolting as they’re primarily used to add shock value, graphically depicting their triggering subject matter.

Kunis is up to the task of portraying a multi-layered leading lady. Her droll delivery makes Ani’s passive-aggressive arrogance seem like an art form. She’s also rather nimble when a spot of levity is brought into stressful situations, as when she insults her obnoxious future aunt (Leah Pinsent) or rolls her eyes at her gauche mother (Connie Britton). Though the material severely hobbles him, Wittrock adds a modicum of depth to his one-dimensional character. Justine Jupe, who plays Ani’s blonde bestie, is also decent, if not hampered by her all-too-brief screen time.

While the story fails and the acting underwhelms, the film’s aesthetics add luster. Barker and production designer Elisa Sauve play up the thematic notion of duality, incorporating reflective surfaces that echo Ani’s dual personas. Alix Friedberg’s contemporary costume designs give characters a sophisticated sheen as an interesting juxtaposition to their messy misery. Colin Watkinson’s cinematography gifts the project with a necessary depth to the imagery. Flashbacks evoke a sullen and cold feeling not terribly far from adult Ali’s color palette, emphasizing the past and present’s connective throughline.

“Luckiest Girl Alive” reminds that not every author with a best-selling, female-led thriller can be as talented as Gillian Flynn, whose “Gone Girl” adaptation provides much of this film’s inspiration. With its superficial sentiments hinting that our harried heroine can survive and thrive if she’s willing to confront difficult truths, the film lacks a genuinely heartening pull. Because of its unwieldy aspects, primarily those shoe-horned into the climax, its simplistic conclusion draws ire instead of the inspired elation these filmmakers crave.

Reviewed online, Los Angeles, October 3, 2022. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 113 MIN.

• Production: A Netflix release of a Picturestart, Made Up Stories, Orchard Farm production. Producers: Bruna Papandrea, Jeanne Snow, Erik Feig, Lucy Kitada, Mila Kunis. Executive producers: Jessica Knoll, Mike Barker, Buddy Enright, Lisa Sterbakov, Shayne Fiske Goldner, Julia Hammer.
• Crew: Director: Mike Barker. Screenplay: Jessica Knoll, based on her novel. Camera: Colin Watkinson. Editor: Nancy Richardson. Music: Linda Perry.
• With: Mila Kunis, Finn Wittrock, Chiara Aurelia, Scoot McNairy, Justine Lupe, Dalmar Abuzeid, Jennifer Beals, Connie Britton. 

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In ‘Luckiest Girl Alive,’ Mila Kunis Brilliantly Navigates a Survivor’s Trauma

Despite a few spoon-fed platitudes, Mila Kunis’ new Netflix film—adapted from the bestselling 2015 novel—is a rare glimpse into the complex realities of post-traumatic stress.

Coleman Spilde

Entertainment Critic

Sabrina Lantos/Netflix

Jessica Knoll’s 2015 novel Luckiest Girl Alive captured lightning in a bottle. That’s cliché doled out ad nauseam, but there is simply no other way to describe its unique presence. Not only was it Knoll’s debut novel, but it also hit hundreds of thousands of readers like a ton of bricks. Two years prior to the viral #MeToo Movement , Luckiest Girl Alive offered a painfully candid portrayal of a woman grappling with the lingering trauma from a teenage sexual assault and the disturbing events in its aftermath—and a healthy dose of catharsis for its readers.

Knoll’s novel arrived at a precarious, important time. Its unflinching depiction of sexual assault—and the years of deeply ingrained, unpredictable distress that can follow it—struck readers who, at the time, had far fewer accessible outlets for similar grief. Even now, seven years after the release of Knoll’s novel and five years after the first Harvey Weinstein allegations sparked millions to share their own #MeToo stories, accounts like this still feel rare.

A year after publishing Luckiest Girl Alive , Knoll disclosed in a Lenny Letter essay that the book was inspired by an assault she’d experienced as a teenager. Knoll also affirmed that, despite a host of differences between herself and the novel’s main character, Ani FaNelli, they shared much of the same post-traumatic stress. Perhaps that’s why Knoll was able to craft a novel that had as much bite as it did genuine emotion, receiving praise from peers like Gone Girl ’s Gillian Flynn and The Girl on the Train ’s Paula Hawkins.

Flynn and Hawkins have both seen their novels adapted as feature films, but only one of them was remotely decent—and it wasn’t the one where Emily Blunt drank vodka out of a Nalgene . Whether or not Knoll’s powerful voice could properly translate to Netflix’s film adaptation of Luckiest Girl Alive , out Friday, was a question the book’s fans have been eagerly awaiting the answer to. Lucky for them, with Knoll penning the screenplay and a sharp Mila Kunis forging her way as Ani, Luckiest Girl Alive is a solid screen adaptation that still feels woefully relevant.

With her respectable job at The Women’s Bible —a very on-the-nose take on Cosmopolitan —and sculpted, old-money fiancé Luke ( Finn Wittrock ), Ani has made a name for herself in the cutthroat world of New York strivers. But it hasn’t been without rigorous planning. She pays thousands of dollars a year for workout classes, endears herself to her editor to climb the ranks, and sneaks carbs when Luke isn’t looking to maintain his perfect idea of her.

But despite micromanaging her own life down to the smallest of details, Ani remains haunted by the assault she endured while attending a private high school on a writing scholarship as a teenager. It’s her greatest secret, the one that she tries to bury with her incessant need for control. But every time someone asks her about a school shooting that closely followed her attack, the memory resurfaces. Ani was never directly implicated in the massacre, but old classmates have stuck to their claims that she was involved—especially Dean Barton (Alex Barone), who has spent years lobbying for gun reform after his spine was severed in the shooting.

Ani’s past, present, and future collide when—weeks before her wedding and days out from a dream job offer—she’s approached by a documentary filmmaker to finally tell her side of the story. Thrust into a tailspin of trauma and unearthed memories, Ani has to decide whether it’s worth it to face her accusers or move forward with the picture-perfect sham of a life she’s built to protect herself.

Though Netflix is marketing Luckiest Girl Alive as a mystery, it’s really a straightforward survivor’s epic. The film is padded by voiceover narration from Kunis that, surprisingly, works well in the context of the character. Instead of being used solely for the purposes of easy exposition or a few snarky laughs (which would feel cheap and useless in a film like this), Ani’s narration rings through each scene like the relentless voice in her head. When Ani is triggered, Kunis’ voice jolts between panic, sarcasm, fear, and confidence. She possesses a deft understanding of the multiple layers of feeling Ani would be mentally traversing by the second, all to micro-process her trauma without showing any weakness.

Ani’s also struggling with her personal distinction between victim and survivor. She might detest hearing the word “rape,” but she bristles even more at the thought of being called a “survivor.” For her, there was no visible fight to survive; it was just something she intrinsically did, telling barely anyone what happened. When asked by the documentary crew if she would prefer they use the term victim, she coldly jabs a straw into her drink. “Yep, victim!”

The delineation between these terms is something that often goes unexplored in stories about assault, with most falling back on “survivor,” because it sounds more hopeful. Ani sees herself somewhere in the blurry, gray area in between. Is she a victim if she didn’t die? Can she be a survivor if her entire existence is ruled by trying to escape her past?

The film acutely observes these kinds of nuances, which come as part of a package deal with intense traumatic stress. Despite thinking that she’s got a handle on her life, Ani’s trauma continues to manifest itself in unexpected ways. After a run-in with an old teacher (Scoot McNairy), Ani loses herself in memory, only to come-to kicking the shit out of a cab driver’s screen console. And when Luke wants to slow down their usually rough sex for something more tender, Ani recoils and shuts it down altogether. These kinds of tricky yet very real expressions of trauma are too often abandoned for the same old, rote depictions of survivors .

Unfortunately, a two-hour film just isn’t enough to give these complicated, everyday representations of trauma’s nefarious incarnations the time they deserve. What worked so well in Knoll’s book gets glossed over here, only scratching the surface of how and why Ani’s triggers manifest themselves in strange ways.

Luckiest Girl Alive is the very rare film that would actually work better as a limited series, given enough time and a loose, episodic structure to examine the realities of Ani’s PTSD. These are real experiences that thousands of people go through, and I often wished that they could be allotted more time in the film than, say, Ani fighting with her mother (a wiry Connie Britton ) about her wedding dress. If we can have five nights of Candy , we can have three weeks of Luckiest Girl Alive !

Even if the film may have inevitably condensed its source material, Mila Kunis burns through every frame with an aching ferociousness. Her Ani is a wonder, as fiery and cunning as she is quietly suffering. Kunis gives Ani a jolting spark of undeniable humanity; she moves and operates exactly as this character should, switching between each of Ani’s complex emotions seamlessly. I don’t think there is any other actress who could so perfectly blend the humor and rage that exist equally within this character at all times.

Despite Kunis’ applause-worthy, moving concluding lines, Luckiest Girl Alive ends on a regrettably tepid note. Knoll and director Mike Barker struggle with the right way to conflate the importance of Ani’s story with the impact of Knoll’s novel. The resulting scenes feel spoon-fed and expected, somewhere between The Assistant and Promising Young Woman .

But even with all of its predictability, the film is still a novel portrayal of the intricacies of trauma. Luckiest Girl Alive is a rare and insightful exploration of the place between victim and survivor, and the facade that we build to hide from not only the world, but ourselves.

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Luckiest Girl Alive Reviews

Skilfully adapted for the screen from her 2015 novel of the same name, Jessica Knoll has brought contemporary concerns alive in a harrowingly thrilling film.

Full Review | Oct 4, 2023

This movie just doesn't quite work...It felt like a very fashionable Hallmark movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5 | Aug 10, 2023

Luckiest Girl Alive is able to tie everything up with a neat bow at the end because nothing was ever unpacked to begin with. This latest Netflix Original is sensationalized trauma packaged neatly for the true-crime-obsessed crowd.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

Some tighter editing, a deeper script and short run-time would've worked in the movies favour, but what we were delivered was a tough yet enjoyable watch that does what it says on the tin.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 24, 2023

Much of the film almost comes across as a forgettable CW drama. ... [Mila] Kunis is certainly a talented actress, but the material for this film was simply not endearing enough to make it memorable for its audience.

Full Review | Jun 16, 2023

Luckiest Girl Alive delivers a heartbreakingly real feeling story about just how coldly the world can be to someone who has survived traumatic events.

Full Review | Jan 4, 2023

Netflix has made the best “Lifetime Original Movie” ever.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 24, 2022

Seen as a clarifying film about the silences that usually surround abuse or as a shooter elegy –whichever it is, affirmative capitalism is the one that ends up triumphant– what remains of Luckiest girl alive is the idea of ​​something uncomfortably bland.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Nov 5, 2022

Mila Kunis is good but not good enough to make this movie anything better than average entertainment.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Oct 20, 2022

there’s a decent film in here somewhere about trauma’s ripple effects and people’s coping mechanisms. ... [But] As a thriller, the jolts just aren’t there, and ginning up those elements saps Ani’s journey of emotional weight.

Full Review | Oct 20, 2022

Luckiest Girl Alive throws a miniseries worth of ideas into a lacklustre movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 19, 2022

Messily (and almost irresponsibly) waffles between tones, and would perhaps have benefited from embracing the black comedy genre it dives into at first... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 17, 2022

It all adds up. But the result isn't always more, sometimes it adds up to less. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 17, 2022

For Kunis, “Luckiest Girl Alive” marks her career acting zenith. In her performance that’s not all that far removed from her Oscar-nominated turn in the equally unnerving “The Black Swan,” Kunis never attempts to soften or sand-down Ani’s rougher edges.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 17, 2022

The film has a somewhat discursive start before coming together to deliver a very potent second half.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 15, 2022

Some of the sequences are difficult to watch at times. But with great storytelling and exceptional performances from both Kunis and Aurelia, it is definitely a film worth watching.

Full Review | Oct 14, 2022

Sometimes irritatingly confusing and redundant. Yet it remains engrossing and, in the end, compelling, even if the way it wraps things up is rather obvious and self-congratulatory.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Oct 13, 2022

After a chaotic opening stanza, Luckiest Girl Alive has plenty going for it.

Full Review | Oct 12, 2022

These are important issues and, even if the narrative is drawn out, director Mike Barker's approach has both gripping tension and resonant commentary that deserves to strike a nerve.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 12, 2022

This emotionally taxing film is likely to spark debate about the portrayal of both sexual and school violence and its repercussions, and Kunis' compelling lead performance drives that portrayal.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 12, 2022

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‘the witcher: sirens of the deep’ animated film gets netflix premiere date; watch clip, film review: mila kunis in netflix’s ‘luckiest girl alive’.

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As often happens, it’s something from out of the past. Assorted flashback snippets throughout the rather long-feeling two-hour running time reveal that a very nasty incident took place once upon a time in a private boarding school that Tifani (where did they come up with that spelling?) at the time participated in covering up. Even though the crime resulted in death, Tifani never told the full story and managed to wiggle out of it all unscathed, legally if not emotionally.

“The past is never dead,” someone helpfully mentions, and it’s clear from Tifani’s neuroses that she’s still greatly troubled by what she experienced way back when. As played by Kunis, Tifani comes off as almost permanently tense and tightly wound, and it’s somewhat disconcerting how very different Chiara Aurelia, the actress who plays Tifani in her teens, looks compared with the older actress.

Tifani does have every reason to feel uptight, but Kunis’ performance remains in clenched mode most of the way, with very little modulation or character revelation, which prevents this smart and accomplished woman from showing a very wide range of colors and emotions. Her anguished dilemma notwithstanding, it’s not all that easy to really become attached to her, and the script would have been helped by a scene or two of Tifani and her soon-to-be husband displaying some real intimacy that might have provided a greater rooting interest in their relationship.

British director Mike Barker — whose many TV credits including The Handmaid’s Tale, Fargo and Broadchurch outclass his big-screen efforts to date — keeps this moving swiftly and coherently, which allows the young characters’ behavior under shocking duress seem plausible. The long-term issue is whether they can live with their terrible secrets their entire lives or finally spill the beans, come what may.

Luckiest Girl Alive was written with adherence to a particular popular formula to reach a particular audience of mostly young women, but it does carry sufficient elements of “What would you have done under the same circumstances?” that lend it a degree of credibility. As formulaic as it is, the story nonetheless confronts the persistence of guilt over past questionable behavior and how people struggle to deal with it, even long after the fact.

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Home » Movies » Movie Reviews

Luckiest Girl Alive review – an absorbing mystery with moments of sobering reality

Visceral while also empowering, Luckiest Girl Alive holds the viewer’s attention with an absorbing mystery and moments of sobering reality. Kunis’s slow descent from numbing pain to self-awareness is subtle but transfixing.

This review of the Netflix film Luckiest Girl Alive does not contain spoilers.

Luckiest Girl Alive hits the streaming waves on Netflix . The smash hit and New York Times best-seller adaptation is true to form, keeping the mix of quality storytelling with scenes of utter horror that many may find prompt uneasy feelings along with buried memories. Many may find this an odd and polarizing mix considering the recent trend of gun violence in our schools. Even the much-talked-about and graphic rape scenes in the film. Yet, the story is told with such consummate grace this may be one of the most entertaining yet gut-wrenching entertainments in years. And who are we to judge a piece of filmmaking from someone who drew from their own experiences? The result is a haunting yet unshackling metaphor for the effects of sexual assault and even victimization.

Luckiest Girl Alive follows Ani (a terrific Mila Kunis ), a writer in New York City who seemingly has a perfect life. She has a job at a top magazine where her editor Lolo ( Jennifer Beals ) thinks she’s a rising star whose writing is “peerless” to the rest. Ani’s also engaged to a bachelor, Luke ( Finn Wittrock ), who comes from a wealthy family and has a top finance job in London waiting for him, to the glee of her mother (played by Connie Britton). She is so image-conscious that she won’t eat a slice of pizza in front of her fiancé unless he leaves the table. And then she blames the server for spilling a drink on them, which leads to the food being tossed.

Ani has perfectly crafted her image and life in a way that gives total control. Unfortunately, she has a secret she keeps from most people that is about to become known. She has a choice to make: Follow Luke to London or stay at taking her dream job at The New York Times . However, his secret will come to light through an insincere true crime director (Dalmar Abuzeid). You see, Ani used to go by TifAni. She is one of a handful of survivors of the worst school shooting in United States history.

One of the victims, a boy named Dean, accused her of being one of the conspirators. Why would he do that? Because he was one of three teenage boys who raped TifAni at a party a few days prior. She reported the assault to her favorite teacher (Scoot McNairy) but is too ashamed and afraid to pursue it. So, this begs the question if Ani/TifAni had anything to do with the shooting.

This film was directed by Mike Barker, a long-time television producer and director of such series as The Handmaid’s Tale , Fargo , and Broadchurch. He makes his feature debut here, and it’s a good one. Working with a script from the author Jessica Knoll from her source material of the same name, Luckiest Girl Alive  is an engrossing first-time feature. Featuring a fierce performance from Mila Kunis, Barker and Knoll successfully adapt a sensitive subject matter with provocative themes that’s also a highly entertaining mystery.

However, let’s make no mistake that many flashbacks can be grueling and tough to watch. Particularly the gang rape scene over several minutes. And, of course, the school shooting scenes are graphic and could be triggering for many. Knoll is on record that the gang rape scene is based on her own experiences, which gives the film added weight. Knowing this, the character, who ruminates in her own head daily, borders on the dangers of having a revenge fantasy, which is what sparked the shooting in the first place.

The whole matter is handled with much thoughtfulness, empathy, and a jolting mix of sobering reality, not only for the victims but the perpetrators. Yet, what Luckiest Girl Alive does so well is explore the areas of victimization. TifAni is singled out with cruel treatment by her attackers, his mother (Connie Bitton), and officials. As much as we are justified in wanting to blame the shooters for their actions, they are victims as well. As much as we see Kunis’s character as a tragic story, her behaviors are becoming self-destructive in her life. Ani’s perfected persona (tough, cool, and cynical) is her cover and shield for her past trauma. Her constant thoughts, feelings, and wants are cloaked by it. Kunis’s slow descent from numbing pain to acutely unguarded self-awareness is subtle but transfixing.

Luckiest Girl Alive is a genre film with timely and modern themes. Despite the film being too long, the story holds the viewer’s attention while mixing in moments of sobering reality. This is a good picture that ultimately may have too many moments of triggering effects for mass audiences. However, the visceral story is empowering, and Kunis’s vulnerability makes Barker and Knoll’s adaptation such an absorbing ride.

What did you think of the Netflix film Luckiest Girl Alive? Comment below.

Additional Reading

• Luckiest Girl Alive ending explained
• Is Luckiest Girl Alive a true story ?

Article by Marc Miller

Marc Miller (also known as M.N. Miller) joined Ready Steady Cut in April 2018 as a Film and TV Critic, publishing over 1,600 articles on the website. Since a young age, Marc dreamed of becoming a legitimate critic and having that famous “Rotten Tomato” approved status – in 2023, he achieved that status.

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