Cat Person review — a botched adaptation of the New Yorker story

★★☆☆☆
Emilia Jones, the star of Coda, returns in this botched adaptation of a New Yorker short story by Kristen Roupenian about bad sex and chauvinism in the digital age. Jones plays Margot, a 20-year-old college student who, after a week of text-based flirtations, experiences the date from hell with the 33-year-old nurse Robert (Succession’s Nicholas Braun). Their night culminates in a sex sequence so humiliating for Margot, it nullifies her feelings for Robert and nudges his misogyny to the surface.

So far, so good, but we’re only 40 minutes in, the short story source is essentially finished and for the rest of the running time the film, poorly adapted by Michelle Ashford (Operation Mincemeat), slowly bombs. Jones and Braun are underserved while the genre inexplicably shifts from the realm of Promising Young Woman and I May Destroy You into actual bloody, tacky, killer-thriller territory. Which, in this instance, is the creative equivalent of throwing in the towel.
15, 118min
In cinemas