This premiere feature, written and directed by Megan Park, reminded me of “Twilight Zone” and the warm melancholy that could be found in some of its best episodes.
A young Canadian girl named Elliott (Maisy Stella) is counting down the last summer days until she leaves her family’s cranberry farm and moves off to a big-city college.
But during a mushroom trip with her friends around a campfire, she is confronted with her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza). Older Elliott warns the teen not to take her present life for granted—and in particular, to watch out for a boy named Chad.
When a gangly likable boy turns up, who is indeed named Chad (played by Percy Hynes White), Elliot’s attraction to him not only clashes with her older self’s warnings, but her history of same-sex attachments.
Some of the details in the story I didn’t catch. (Just how do younger and older Elliott establish a smartphone connection?)
But there’s a low-key charm to the movie’s moral—that we often don’t know when we will say good-bye to the people we love or the routine joys in our life. Also, there are one or two moments when you may need to keep hankies close by.