New Year, New You (2018)

This is the third movie I've seen that was produced as part of the Blumhouse/Hulu collaboration Into the Dark, a holiday-themed streaming series of horror movies. The other two, both set at Christmas, were pretty good (and more importantly interesting), and this maintains that trend. "New Year, New You" is a thriller co-written and directed by Sophia Takal, who'd go on to make the 2019 Black Christmas remake (also produced by Blumhouse) the following year. This also maintains the trend of feeling like it may have been reworked into a holiday movie, rather than originally envisioned as one. I'm not sure that was actually the case with any or all of these, but the holiday elements keep feeling somewhat peripheral to the stories and primary themes. To be clear, this is in no way a complaint; only an observation. I'll also add that if I'm right and some of these were existing scripts adjusted to work with the holidays, they justified the alteration by making the holiday elements feel substantial.

Despise being a fairly minimalist production (four significant characters, about the same number of bit parts, and mostly just a single location), there's a lot about New Year, New You worth discussing. I'll start with the characters, all of which are female. This isn't just an interesting spin on casting - it ties into the movie's themes, which explore the ways women can manipulate and hurt each other by weaponizing each others' insecurities and weaknesses. The premise centers around four friends celebrating a holiday in a large, open house, at which point a masked killer doesn't show up. The women bring about the carnage themselves, and if anything that's more disturbing.

Those women are Alexis (Suki Waterhouse), Danielle (Carly Chaikin), Kayla (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), and Chloe (Melissa Bergland), all of whom are in their 20s and were friends in high school. Alexis, the movie's POV character, dreamed of becoming an actress, but her life fell apart due to guilt stemming from another former friend of theirs committing suicide due to Danielle's bullying. Unlike Alexis, Danielle had little difficulty moving past this and went on to become a wealthy wellness influencer. Meanwhile, Chloe struggles with self-esteem, while Kayla... actually, Kayla seems to be doing pretty well. She has an emotionally rewarding job and is in a loving, committed relationship with a woman.

Alexis invites her old friends to her parents' house (conveniently a mansion large enough to accommodate the usual horror-movie shenanigans) on New Year's to celebrate and perhaps put the past behind them. Only of course there's another plan, as well. Prior to the movie, Alexis talked Chloe and Kayla into agreeing to help her capture and "scare" Danielle into confessing on camera her role in their friend's suicide years earlier, ending her career in the process. Kayla and Chloe agreed in the hope this would allow Alexis to find closure and move on (it helps they bear grudges against Danielle for bullying them, as well).

They manage to subdue and tie up Danielle fairly easily, but it quickly becomes apparent she has no intention of giving Alexis what she wants, causing Alexis to start upping the stakes. As Kayla realizes there's a real possibility Alexis means to torture Danielle, she pushes back. Alexis attempts to convince her, leaving Chloe to watch over Danielle, which turns out to be a mistake. Preying on Chloe's insecurities and hopes, she convinces her she wants to make her a star, essentially taking over Danielle's role as an online influencer when Danielle ascends to television. She gets Chloe to free her and the two incapacitate Kayla and Alexis and trap them in a steam room. Initially, Danielle insists this is to scare them, but it eventually becomes clear she means to kill them and stage it to look like an accident.

Alexis and Kayla manage to get free, leading to a game of cat and mouse through the mansion. Chloe winds up fighting with and accidentally killing Kayla. When Kayla's girlfriend comes looking for her, they murder her, as well, and plan to tell the cops that the killings were committed by her in retaliation for Kayla breaking up with her. Of course, for that plan to work they'll need Alexis dead, as well, but that was already Danielle's intent.

Alexis kills Chloe, also accidentally, leaving just her and Danielle. Alexis gets the upper hand and winds up the last woman alive in a house of corpses.

In an epilogue, we see her taking over Danielle's role as an influencer, focusing on self-defense, as opposed to shilling health drinks, but it's worth noting that Alexis is adopting the same mannerisms and techniques of manipulation as her predecessor. In addition, she avoided suspicion by following the plan she overheard Danielle create: blaming Kayla's girlfriend for the deaths and tarnishing the memory of the only two innocent people in the entire movie. This is particularly hypocritical given Alexis manipulated Kayla into helping her in the first place by insisting she was trying to reveal Danielle's lies. While Danielle was almost certainly a worse person than Alexis, the movie is pretty clear that this is anything but a happy or just resolution.

But it is still a resolution, in the New Year's sense of the term, which ties into how the holiday is used. This is a story about the relationship between the present and the past. Alexis wants to move beyond her own past by forcing Danielle to acknowledge hers. Danielle has no intention of admitting anything and views the past as unchangeable - only the present and future matter. By the end of the movie, Alexis adopts that philosophy, or perhaps she always had it and only pretended otherwise to hide her jealousy.

I said earlier I wasn't convinced this script started as a New Year's movie, but it definitely works as one. I like how the traditional concepts of transformation, resolution, endings, and beginnings play out differently with these themes. You could view this through the lens of one woman's reign ending and another's starting, or simply as extensions of lies told to manipulate others (and perhaps ourselves). Either way, it's clever stuff.

It's also fun, to the extent that word applies when discussing a thriller. Though, for all the death and trauma, this retains a comedic side. At times the jokes are a little too on-the-nose, but more than enough work to keep this entertaining.

I also want to draw attention to an aspect that surprised me a bit. The other two installments of this series I watched seemed to distance themselves from the tone and style of a TV movie, while this embraced them. The style of the opening credits, musical choices, and some of the editing choices evoke old television movies and drama shows. I certainly don't mind TV movies aiming for a cinematic feel, but seeing one embrace and play with nostalgia for the medium it's actually part of was both surprising and refreshing.

Overall, I found this quite good, especially when considering its budget. Fans of psychological thrillers in particular will find this a rewarding viewing experience, but even those of us who are tepid on that genre will find a great deal to appreciate.