“Beautiful Friend” (2024) is wedged somewhere in between the found footage and fake documentary genre. Set at the beginning of the pandemic in California, Daniel (Adam Jones), an incel and former film student, decides to stock up on supplies like everyone else. Believing that he can finally have a relationship, he abducts a woman, Madison Richards (Alexandrea Meyer), and decides to make a film about this experience.
Timing is everything, and “Beautiful Friend” is being released after “Woman of the Hour” (2024) when (checks notes) Anna Kendrick decided to reinvent the true crime genre of serial killers by prioritizing the target’s point of view over the serial killer. Kendrick’s directorial debut is also available on the largest streaming platform in the world whereas people will have to pay extra and choose to watch director and writer Truman Kewley’s feature debut. The appeal of found footage is giving a viewer the vicarious thrill of feeling as if they are having a first-hand experience of experiencing realistic danger from a place of safety. It is possible to shoot from the perspective of the bad guy. Films like “Man Bites Dog” (1993) steps in the shoes of a serial killer and indicts the audience through the film crew as accomplices to his wickedness allowing themselves to be complicit. Shooting a film from an incel’s point of view theoretically sounds fresh and interesting because an incel is not automatically a serial killer.
The ideal viewer of “Beautiful Friend” is someone unfamiliar with Elliot Rodger, a mass murderer who left a manifesto, or the incel, involuntarily celibate, online subculture, which did not commence as a heterosexual, white, male movement, but has become one. The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed them as a supremacist hate group. Incel fantasy life is focused on raping children and women, but when they act in the real world, it often results in mass murder. While Daniel’s verbalized attitude is aligned with this subculture, his actions are not. A better on-screen example of an incel is “La Bete” or “The Beast” (2023), in which an artificial intelligence machine can help a person revisit their past incarnations. The woman protagonist revisits an encounter with an incel, who had a shot with her, but was incapable of accepting her interest and could only perceive her as hostile. Daniel has more in common with the men who abducted survivors like Jaycee Dugard, Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, Elizabeth Smart and Elisabeth Fritzl, who are capable of coexisting with women as objects then enslaving them instead of an incel, whose imagination is filled with sexual violence, but in the real world, prefers to take out their physical rage on girls and women. So Daniel feels unrealistic from the start because an incel’s rage usually overpowers any fantasy of sexual domination and enslavement of women though it is not impossible.
“Beautiful Friend” mostly consists of shots of Daniel setting up cameras in his white van, home and car then follows him as he stalks potential targets before he finally selects one. Then the film focuses more on her. Most of the film has a voiceover of Daniel’s monotonous thoughts before he can torture Madison by constantly whispering in her ear. There are depictions of sexual violence, but in Daniel’s mind, he believes that it is possible that they will be able to be a couple if she can accept that her captivity is the new normal. Because of the pandemic, they are shot like a true crime Adam and Eve isolated in these camera lined spaces that he carved out.
Madison does her best to go along with his agenda and tries to humanize herself to him by discussing her family life and relating to his experience as also a child of a single parent household. As soon as she is alone, she tries to free herself from her chains and padlocked handcuffs. Daniel is testing her to see if she is actually compliant with his plans for them to be a couple.
The acting is top notch. Jones’ monotone whisper and lack of animation makes him feel like a psycho with no flashes of humanity or redemption despite his chants professing otherwise. Meyer’s performance is pitch perfect as a woman forced to play girlfriend but will scream or bolt at the first opportunity. The scenes of isolation in the desert offer a transcendent backdrop that contrast the horrific type of training that Daniel puts Madison through, but again, “Woman of the Hour” covers similar ground. The standout section is the use of subliminal messaging when words flash quickly on the screen to represent Daniel’s screaming id. For example, when his mom visits, the word See You Next Tuesday flashes on screen. It happens periodically, and while Daniel is the one ostensibly doing it, it is still being done and is considered an unethical practice.
Is “Beautiful Friend” a bad film? No. Is it a good film? In execution, it is fine. What makes a film worth a person spending money or recommending to someone else? Movies are empathy machines that at least offer a different perspective, and this movie does not do anything that has not already been done. “Megan Is Missing” (2011) is a disturbing and chilling found footage film about the plight of a missing high school student and the next target of the abductor. On one hand, these kinds of films can be derided as glorified snuff films or soft-core dark web wannabes, but they are genuinely traumatizing because it offers an experience that people do not want to have and become cautionary tales.
While “Beautiful Friend” fits into that dynamic, the messaging is muddy, and the point is unclear. It may represent a demented man’s perspective, but it does not humanize him. It falls apart because the implication is that once he accepts that he will never get what he wants, a relationship, he will kill Madison, but the film does not accept that truth and stops short. This film should end with a murder-suicide, not a fantasy of dystopian isolation and uneasy companionship. A man like that would not want her to talk to him ever.
Alternatively, there is no moment where Madison could have avoided her capture or escape. Usually, these types of films make the characters slightly flawed so the audience can feel a smidge superior. While Kewley should be praised for resisting this impulse, it also means that Madison is the underwritten perfect victim. She has no hopes and dreams for herself though she does get one solid line about wanting to live for herself, but Kewley does not build on that castle in the sky. What would Madison’s life look like if she was free? There is an intriguing, accidental concept that Kewley may not have intentionally touched on-women are captive even when they are not trapped with an incel. Society teaches women to live for others. If she just lived for herself, what would her life be like? Women in captivity survive by choosing themselves.
“Beautiful Friend” is fine, but not notable enough to be worth the mental scarring of enduring eighty-one minutes of entitled, aggrieved whispers of a dangerous person. It lacks true insight into its psychological portrait of an incel and stops short of depicting how a spirit remains alive in captivity. If you are not looking for authenticity and want to experience the vicarious fear of being stuck with the hushed ravings of the worst that humanity has to offer, go for it.
