Happily

    Happily
    2021

    Synopsis

    Tom and Janet have been happily married for years. But a visit from a mysterious stranger leads to a dead body, a lot of questions, and a tense couples' trip with friends who may not actually be friends at all.

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    Cast

    • Joel McHaleTom
    • Kerry BishéJanet
    • Natalie ZeaKaren
    • Paul ScheerVal Duffield
    • Natalie MoralesPatricia
    • Jon DalyDonald
    • KirbyMaude
    • Shannon WoodwardCarla
    • Charlyne YiGretel
    • Breckin MeyerRichard

    Recommendations

    • 83

      The Film Stage

      McHale and Bishé are the ones who carry things because only they (like us) are aware of the sinister goings on beneath their over-the-top lust and the increasingly transparent surrealist nightmare entrapping them. Their dynamic is simultaneously an impossible ideal and an authentic reality to aspire towards. Mankind’s unwitting heroes.
    • 79

      Paste Magazine

      First-time feature helmer Grabinski firmly steers his script away from sticking in one mode or another: It’s neither purely scary, nor purely tense, nor purely hilarious, but instead most or all of these at once, producing a uniquely unnerving tone where shortness of breath in one moment instantaneously gives way to cackles in the next.
    • 75

      IndieWire

      A clever, high-concept dark comedy that uses the moral clarity of “The Twilight Zone” to see through the veil of modern cynicism, Happily jackknifes into the murky waters between #RelationshipGoals and #BodySnatcherVibes as it skewers the assumption that something must be very wrong with anyone who’s too happy for too long.
    • 75

      Polygon

      Happily is incredibly fun from start to finish. If nothing else, its nagging flaws feel less like errors, and more like untapped potential. Grabinski is clearly onto something, and it’s only a matter of time before he truly finds it.
    • 63

      Chicago Sun-Times

      There’s nothing inherently wrong in leaving some things open-ended, but Happily opts out of giving us answers in such a flippant, off-hand manner that we feel betrayed for investing in the story to that moment.
    • 60

      The New York Times

      Grabinski has both wit and energy, and these qualities, along with a game cast, help keep “Happily” afloat for far longer than most made-in-L.A. dark domestic comedies. But the movie wants to do too many things, and grows diffuse.
    • 60

      The Hollywood Reporter

      Ultimately, Happily seems to bite off more than it can chew, proving more successful in its insightful exploration of relationship dynamics than its bizarre storyline. That few of its narrative mysteries are resolved is obviously meant to be purposefully ambiguous, but the results are finally more frustrating than intriguing.
    • 50

      The Associated Press

      Without spoiling any secrets, the film progresses in horror-film mode before, in its third act, tying things up in a somewhat clever, unexpected way. By then, though, you may have given up on this group.