Delayed Reaction: Trust

Premise: A husband and wife don’t trust each other and decide to test it.

 

I have no good reason for watching this. My thought process really went no further than “I’m not looking for anything challenging right now, I already have Hulu pulled up, and Victoria Justice is pretty.” Sure, there’s a little more to it than that, but not much. It’s a 2021 movie, and this time of year, I’m trying to sneak in as many of those as I can, giving Trust the tie-breaker vote over similar movies. I remain genuinely curious about Victoria Justice. These Disney Channel and Nickelodeon stars who stay in the business tend to be stealthily good performers. Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez may have gone onto be pop stars, but whenever they do show up to host SNL and be in a series they remind us that they are old pros at this. So many can fall back on a network sitcom if all else fails. I’m still figuring out who Victoria Justice is though. She’s had a music career. She’s done the teen movies. Nothing has stuck yet. I wonder what the next move is. She’s 28, so a lot of options are still open. She can become a Stream Queen. Afterlife of the Party did pretty well on Netflix this year. If she’s willing to move to ensembles, I’m sure a laugh track sitcom would welcome her. She’s the perfect age for a CW show too (She still has a good 5 years of passing for a college student if necessary). I wonder when she’ll get the Sundance bug. I don’t know. She remains a weird blank slate to me.

 

I just hope she doesn’t stick with movies like Trust. Aspects of the movie are intriguing. There’s a little Last Night or Closer in this in the right light. I like the time hopping and reveals over time. The shifting trust of the two leads is fun. I just don’t ever think the movie makes its case. The husband cheats pretty early on. At absolute best, he and his wife are even in how wrong they are. The fact that he feels neglected by his wife is never enough to sway sympathy to his side.

 

There needs to be a term for movies that spend a lot of time convincing the audience that the men are more attractive and the women are less attractive. It’s sort of “male gaze” adjacent. Victoria Justice spends most of the movie like she’s unaware how attractive she is: worried that her husband would cheat on her and taken aback by how much her artist client, Lucien Laviscount, is attracted to her. I laughed at the scene when Justice hires Katherine McNamara and McNamara has to assure her that she’ll dress nicer and look prettier when she tries to seduce her husband. I’m sorry, no real person is looking at McNamara at any point on screen in this movie and saying, “I don’t know. She seems kind of frumpy wearing pants like that”. On the other hand, the movie works hard to tell me that Matthew Daddario and Lucien Laviscount drop panties on sight. I’m not the best judge, I suppose, both neither strike me as hunky. They are good looking men, but I don’t see why Justice would assume every woman is throwing herself at him. A character actually calls Laviscount the sexiest man alive which…really? I guess he’s got the artist thing going for him and he’s a bad boy. Seems forced to me.

 

The vague ending is expected but works well enough. I got the movie I thought I would, so it’s hard to complain. Nothing popped in the movie. When watching a movie like this, the hope is always that there will be one thing that pops. Like 50 Shades of Grey. Very mediocre movie, but I definitely came away from it thinking Dakota Johnson could be great in a better movie. Nothing pops in Trust. Justice and Daddario don’t raise the material. There are no supporting characters making the most of their screen time. The screenplay has clever ideas but doesn’t explore any of them enough. This is a complete write-off as a film experience.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don’t Recommend