‘Oh, Hi!’ Review: Charming Logan Lerman/Molly Gordon Rom-Com Subverts Indie Movie Clichés

It could practically be its own subgenre by now – the low-cost indie that gets maximum production value out of being set completely in a cabin in the woods. It’s an isolated location with a limited cast where anything can happen and the characters, left to their own devices (and usually without cell phone service), can indulge in pages and pages of budget-friendly dialogue. Maybe there’s a supernatural element or suspense undertones. Add a point if there’s a reference to Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” series, perhaps the ultimate cheap cabin-in-the-woods franchise.

You get that the filmmaking team behind “Oh, Hi!,” an endlessly charming romantic comedy that just premiered at Sundance, knows how embedded the cliches of a cabin-in-the-woods indie can be. It zigs where you think it’ll zag, weaponizing that knowledge and using it to subvert expectations. It constantly keeps you on your toes in a way that feels refreshing, occasionally downright invigorating.

The cold open for “Oh, Hi!” (named after a misspelled road sign) features Molly Gordon’s Iris frantically calling her best friend (Geraldine Viswanathan) to come to the cabin in the woods she’s rented with her new boyfriend Isaac (Logan Lerman). When Viswanathan’s character gets there, they creep towards the cabin’s bedroom door. A dramatic music cue thunders overhead, implying something very, very wrong is behind that bedroom door. But then Brooks switches gears completely. We don’t get to see what’s behind the door and instead are thrown back to a day before, when Iris and Isaac are on the trip to the cabin for a romantic weekend getaway – they’re buying roadside strawberries and singing along to Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s 1983 soft rock duet “Islands in the Stream” and engaging in the kind of flirty banter you expect from the most closely connected couples.

When they get to the cabin, the sweet hijinks continue (they tour the house, discuss food, make out on the couch) but that night things … take a turn. We have been expressly forbidden from sharing actual details of the plot, but the official synopsis for the film included in the Sundance program states that the couple’s “first romantic weekend getaway goes awry in a most unexpected way.” That it does. Big time.

Obviously, in any one of these types of movies, the performers can make or break the film. Thankfully, the cast of “Oh, Hi!” is very much up to the challenge.

Much like the rapturous “Hit Man” screening at last year’s Sundance heralded Glen Powell as a really-for-real leading man, “Oh, Hi!” announces Gordon as an honest-to-goodness movie star. For years, Gordon has been the best part of whatever she’s in, popping up and stealing scenes in Olivia Wilde’s “Booksmart” and the lauded FX series “The Bear,” but here, in a leading role as Iris, she commands the screen. She darts and dashes, rattling off the script’s ratatat dialogue (Gordon concocted the story with Brooks and Brooks wrote the screenplay) or crashing into scenes in an oversized t-shirt, propelled by an unseen energy that only she can tap into. Her energy is perfectly modulated, scene by scene, and it’s incredible how she and Brooks were able to chart her character’s emotional journey throughout the film. But the smaller scenes are just as impactful. Sometimes the camera just lingers on her face, her large eyes so wholly expressive that she doesn’t have to say a word.

And what makes her performance even more of a magic trick is that, in lesser hands, it could have been two-dimensional and one-note. It would have been easy for Gordon to simply play the character as unhinged; the “psycho girlfriend” archetype writ large. But Gordon, working from Brooks’ screenplay, gives a fully dimensional performance, full of nuance and grace. There is so much to Iris that if you find yourself thinking one way about her, several scenes later you’ll think (and feel) something different. Then you’ll question why you thought that way about her earlier. It’s miraculous and adds even more depth to the movie.

Lerman’s performance is just as brilliant and physical but in a different way; talking about it would ruin some of the surprise. The actor has always been a bright, articulate presence and “Oh, Hi!” is no different. Viswanathan and John Reynolds, as her affably supportive boyfriend, are also excellent. Plus, we get an outstanding David Cross guest appearance as the cabin’s closest neighbor; he’ll have you howling.

You can tell that Brooks really cares about these characters; there’s never any condescension or unease around any of them. It’s sincere through and through and never comes across as overtly earnest or cloying. Her empathy calls to mind some of the early works of director Jonathan Demme, who even with something as wacky as “Married to the Mob,” made sure to craft a performance Michelle Pfeiffer could wholly inhabit. The same is true here. Brooks has crafted a romantic comedy where feeling is just as important as laughing. You’ll do a good bit of both in “Oh, Hi!”

There’s plenty of other things to love in “Oh, Hi!,” from Brooks repurposing Dolly Parton’s “Heartbreaker,” from her underrated 1978 disco album of the same name, for one of the movie’s more powerful sequences to a final shot that is wholly unforgettable, and it’s easy to imagine that, with a thoughtful distributor and a mindful marketing campaign, “Oh, Hi!” could be a sleeper sensation. Even if it does inspire 20 more low-budget cabin-in-the-woods movies. Oh well.

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