Holly rings her school to tell them she is staying at home. She isn’t sick. She just can’t bring herself to go. “Bad things are going to happen today,” she says just above a whisper, her voice cracking.
But bad things happen to Holly most days; she is bullied constantly, little jibes from girls who say she smells or classmates who go through elaborate efforts not to touch “the witch,” as they call her. It is hard to see why. The central character in Holly is just the designated victim, as she will soon become a designated savior. Two ends of the same straw, each tormenting in their own way.
She is right about that bad day. A fire breaks out in the school. Ten people die. In the face of such heartbreak, there is not much discussion of...
But bad things happen to Holly most days; she is bullied constantly, little jibes from girls who say she smells or classmates who go through elaborate efforts not to touch “the witch,” as they call her. It is hard to see why. The central character in Holly is just the designated victim, as she will soon become a designated savior. Two ends of the same straw, each tormenting in their own way.
She is right about that bad day. A fire breaks out in the school. Ten people die. In the face of such heartbreak, there is not much discussion of...
- 9/9/2023
- by Stephanie Bunbury
- Deadline Film + TV
When Holly’s classroom peers call her “the witch,” she meekly shrugs it off. It’s not the least flattering slur with which the shy, soft-spoken 15-year-old has been bullied, and it beats people complaining about how she smells. It even may, at a certain level, be true. When Holly’s seemingly psychic abilities save her from a fatal disaster at school, her status in the community shifts from outcast to otherworldly icon — as if Carrie White had actually been crowned prom queen, and not bucketed with blood. Stephen King’s antiheroine comes to mind more than once in Fien Troch’s elusive, intriguing teen drama “Holly,” which plays a little like his story stripped of any outright horror, and only the everyday vanities and failings of humanity in its place.
Still, as a portrait of our collective ability to exploit and destroy any precious resource — human or otherwise, real...
Still, as a portrait of our collective ability to exploit and destroy any precious resource — human or otherwise, real...
- 9/7/2023
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
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