Movie Review: ‘Josie’

Review by Bradley Smith

“Some stories are happy, some are sad, some are tragic, and some are pathetic.” Josie is at least one of these. Also, I would add generic and not very memorable. On the plus side, it has fine actors, and cringe worthy exploration into the human heart and mind (cringe worthy because you can see the mistakes people make because of their emotions). Some movies are cheery, showing the positives of new love; this is not one of those movies.

Hank (Dylan McDermott) lives a quiet, lonesome life in a small town. He mostly keeps to himself until one day when a knock on the door changes his life forever. The hand behind that knock belongs to the titular character, Josie (Sophie Turner; Game of Thrones, X-Men), a high school student who just moved in across the lot from Hank. Slowly, as the two spend time together, Hank becomes obsessed with Josie; call it a crush, call it lust, possibly call it illegal as her age is never really established, but it isn’t good for Hank one way or another.

The film is a drama in just about every sense, from Hank’s downward spiral stemming from his emotional attachment to Josie, to the revelations about Hank’s past which lends to a recurring hallucination, to the third leg in their little love triangle – Marcus, another high school student who takes an interest in Josie and was already often at odds with Hank. Aside from the love triangle, there is a bit of a mystery that unfolds; don’t want to spoil it, but one moral of this story could be you should always be cautious about who you let into your life.

Anyway, none of the characters (save maybe the turtle) are very like-able despite having like-able actors; not sure if that was intentional in the writing, but it makes for an anticlimactic ending. The plot is well developed, albeit sad, and not too difficult to follow. Overall, the movie is decent enough if you like the actors and have an hour and some change to spare; it’s just not that thrilling and will likely be forgotten within a week after viewing.