It could practically be its own subgenre now—the cheap indie that gets maximum production value from being completely in a cabin in the woods. It’s an isolated location with a limited cast where anything can happen and the characters, left to their own devices (and usually without cell phone service), can enjoy pages and pages of budget-friendly dialogue. Perhaps there is a supernatural element or suspenseful undertones. Add a point if there’s a reference to Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” series, perhaps the ultimate cheap cabin-in-a-low franchise.
You get that the filmmaking team behind “Oh, hello!” It zigs where you think it will zag, weaponizing that knowledge and using it to subvert expectations. It constantly keeps you on your toes in a way that feels refreshing, sometimes downright refreshing.
The cold is open to “Oh, hello!” (Named after a misspelled road sign) has Molly Gordon’s Iris frantically calling her best friend (Geraldine Viswanathan) to come to the cabin in the woods she’s rented with her new boyfriend Isaac (Logan Lerman). When Viswanathan’s character gets there, they crawl towards the cabin’s bedroom door. A dramatic music cue thunders overhead, implying that something very, very wrong is behind that bedroom door. But then Brooks switches gears completely. We don’t get to see what’s behind the door and instead are thrown back to a day before, when Iris and Isaac are on their way to the cabin for a romantic weekend getaway – they buy strawberries on the road and sing along to Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s Soft Rock Duet” Islands in the Stream” from 1983 and engages in the kind of flirtatious banter you’d expect from the most connected couples.
When they get to the cabin, the cute hijinks continue (they tour the house, discuss food, make out on the couch) but that night…take a ride. We’re expressly forbidden from sharing actual plot details, but the official synopsis for the Sundance-listed film says the couple’s “first romantic weekend getaway goes wrong in the most unexpected way.” That it does. Big time.
Obviously, in any of these types of movies, the performers can make or break the movie. Thankfully, the role of “Oh, hello!” is very much up to the challenge.
Like the terrifying “hit man” screening at last year’s Sundance, Glen Powell announced like a true leading man, “Oh, hey!” Announcing Gordon as an honest-to-goodness movie star. For years, Gordon has been the best part of whatever she’s in, appearing and stealing scenes in Olivia Wilde’s “Booksmart” and the promised FX series “The Bear,” but here, in a leading role as Iris, she commands the screen . She darts and dashes, rattles off the script’s Ratatat dialogue (Gordon assembled the story with Brooks and Brooks wrote the screenplay) or crashes into scenes in an oversized T-shirt, driven by an invisible energy that only she can harness. Her energy is perfectly modulated, scene by scene, and it’s incredible how she and Brooks were able to chart her character’s emotional journey throughout the film. But the smaller scenes are just as affecting. Sometimes the camera remains only on her face, her big eyes so completely expressive that she doesn’t have to say a word.
And what makes her performance even more of a magic trick is that in lesser hands it could have been two-dimensional and one-note. It would have been easy for Gordon to simply play the character as disaffected; The “Psycho Girlfriend” archetype writ large. But Gordon, working from Brooks’ script, gives a fully dimensional performance, full of nuance and grace. There’s so much to Iris that if you find yourself thinking one way about her, several scenes later you’ll be thinking (and feeling) something else. Then you question why you thought of her that way before. It’s miraculous and adds even more depth to the film.
Lerman’s performance is equally brilliant and physical but in a different way; To talk about it would spoil some of the surprise. The actor has always been a bright, articulate presence and “Oh, hello!” is no different. Viswanathan and John Reynolds, as her emotionally supportive boyfriend, are also excellent. Plus, we get a one-of-a-kind David Cross guest appearance as the cabin’s next-door neighbor; He will have you howling.
You can tell that Brooks really cares about these characters; There is never any condescension or concern around any of them. It is sincere through and through and never comes across as overtly serious or cloying. Her empathy invokes some of the early works of director Jonathan Demme, who, even with something as crazy as “married to the mob,” made sure to create a performance Michelle Pfeiffer could fully inhabit. The same applies here. Brooks has created a romantic comedy there feeling is as important as laughing. You’ll do a bit of both in “Oh, Hello!”
There’s plenty of other things to love about “Oh, Hello!,” from Brooks recycling Dolly Parton’s “Heartbreaker,” from her underrated 1978 Disco album of the same name, for one of the film’s more powerful sequences to a final shot that’s completely unforgettable, and it’s easy to imagine that, with a thoughtful distributor and a conscious marketing campaign, “Oh, hey!” can be a sleeping sensation. Even if it inspires another 20 low-budget films in the cabin. Oh well.
