Netflix’s ‘When We First Met’ Plays More Like A Horror Movie Than A Rom-Com

Picture this. Boy meets girl. Boy likes girl. Girl likes boy as friend. Boy discovers means of time traveling back to the night they met and proceeds to do so over and over again until he can manipulate her into falling for him. This is a literal nightmare, and also the premise for When We First Met, Netflix‘s Adam DeVine-starring rom-com that dropped on Friday. This idea has somewhat been explored before in About Time, but that flick is salvaged by the charm of Domhnall Gleeson, less creepy utilization of time travel, and overall better writing. The big question about When We First Met, though, is why? Why, of all the premises for rom-coms that have ever existed, did it seem like it was the right time to employ this one? And why ignore the fact that it works much, much better as a horror movie than a romantic comedy?

When Noah (DeVine) meets Avery (Alexandra Daddario), he very much believes that they have connected on a romantic level and spends the rest of the evening pulling out all the stops (he even likes… jazz!), but when he goes in for the kiss at the end of the night, she dodges it and hugs him instead. She’s thrilled to have a close guy friend for once, and three years later (where our story begins) at Avery’s engagement party to an Abercrombie cut-out named Ethan, Noah gets so trashed that he makes a scene and spends most of his time vomiting before he’s escorted out by Avery’s best friend Carrie (Shelley Hennig, perhaps the most charming person in this movie and an actress we hope gets to work in better projects after this). By the end of the day, he’s in a magical photobooth, where he drunkenly wishes he hadn’t blown his shot with Avery, and wakes up the next day on Halloween 2014. You can kind of guess where it goes from here.

With each attempt to shake things up and win Avery’s heart, the sinister nature of this movie becomes more and more apparent. In About Time, when Gleeson’s character realizes he can’t make Margot Robbie have feelings for him because, brace yourselves – she just doesn’t like him – he accepts this and moves on with his life. For Noah, this is apparently not an option. For the majority of the movie, he recalls his first night with Avery through rose-colored glasses and seems to believe that if he could just make her see how perfect they are for one another, they’d have a happily-ever-after. “Just use everything that you’ve learned about her to make her fall in love with you,” he tells himself. Sure. Okay.

As you can probably guess (or have already seen), in the end, Noah realizes that it’s actually been Carrie (!) he should go for all along, and decides to ditch the idea of attempting to bed Avery for all of eternity and pursue her quirky, photo-taking best friend instead. This is also a nightmare. Because how can we be sure that he’s not going to pull the same crazy-obsessed-guy trick on her as soon as this movie ends, despite their happy Instagram collage that rolls during the credits? Imagine how great of a horror movie ending that would be. It’s every lady’s worst nightmare. Watching a guy try to get out of the friend zone by any means possible for 90 minutes is not really my idea of a fun rom-com, but it does make for a pretty chilling thriller.

To give the folks behind When We First Met the benefit of the doubt, this is obviously a movie made pre- #MeToo and #TimesUp, but it’s still an unsettling watch. If Noah’s repeated time travel and attempts to convince a completely resistant woman to have sex with him were played as the horrifying spectacle they are instead of the cutesy romantic spin the film runs with, it might actually work. Instead, we’re left with a nightmarish scenario of relentless manipulation that every woman has faced or fears facing (minus, y’know, the time travel).