Emily Coutts

(On Cable TV, January 2021) The essential plot elements of Hazy Little Thing should feel familiar, what with a few friends coming together to celebrate a birthday. In a fine theatrical tradition, every character has their own set of secrets and lies that become exposed during the weekend—the film should have been a relatively straightforward exercise, even with the added curlicues of a central character being a (terminally?) depressive young author struggling for an encore, addicted to social media but unable to make sense of her own decaying network of friends. But Hazy Little Thing lives up to its title by being substantially fuzzier than it should be. Unlike other similar films coming from a theatrical origin of ratcheting dramatic tension, this movie ebbs and flows, seldom pulling tightly on its plot threads and not culminating in any clear climax. Oh, it’s amiable enough when it gets going—among other things, the handful-big cast is chiefly female (with a token male), and the actors do get decent material at times—I kept watching for Supinder Wraich, but Emily Coutts and Erin Margurite Carter have more challenging roles as not-entirely-likable sisters. While the result is good enough, it’s far from being as gripping as it could have been: the drug-taking sequence feels overly familiar, but it’s the overall feeling of looseness that makes Hazy Little Thing underperform compared to other similar films: I suspect that much of the film may have been improvised, but even if it wasn’t, the script is far from being as disciplined as it should have been.