Looking for fun during The Most Wonderful Time of the Year? I’ve got a few ideas this season, and a few clunkers too…

Genre – Stepford Handmaid’s Tales
Splat Factor – All but nonexistent
Year Released – 2019
Where I Watched – Netflix

What it is – A girl who wants to buck her family system finds herself in a “perfect” rehab that’s a bit too perfect. She meets her two roommates, and they try to figure out what’s going on…before it’s too late.

Why Watch This – This is a trippy, gleefully subversive film that, like other “let’s make The Female complacent” stories, will be rattling around in my brain for a good while. This film is especially eerie nowadays, with so many people in power who want to curb a woman’s right to, well, anything. (Well, the rights of any Other, to be fair.) Far more of a think piece that its decadent Alice-in-Wonderland set design and lush cinematography would suggest.

The garden climax is weirdly out of nowhere and absolutely WTF, as if they were trying to figure out how to wrap things up and decided to go fully batshit. Hey, it does track with the crazy strange ambience that preceeded it. So, win? Still, with a cast that includes Emma Roberts as our stalwart heroine, Awkwafina and Danielle Macdonald as her confused roommates, and Mila Jovovich as the gloriously campy mistress of girls the Dutchess? Yes please.

How To Watch – With your best “fight the patriarchy” buds that are looking for unsettling chills rather than outright scares. Have plenty of milk on hand; spiked or no, your choice. (I suggest Bailey’s. I always suggest Bailey’s.)

Rating – 3.5 out of 5 pumpkins.