You’re even more terrifying in the daylight

It Ends With Us is the new highly anticipated, and first of probably many, Colleen Hoover film adaptations. If you’re not familiar, Colleen Hoover is the latest craze and the biggest name in fiction romance novels. She’s a Heartland author who came to prominence during the pandemic and mainly writes about beautiful women who just can’t help but fall in love with troubled gorgeous bad boys. She’s become a mainstay of the Target book section and the subject of countless eye rolls from bookstore clerks.

My goal is not to lambast Hoover, she gets enough hate online, but I do want to make clear the type of books she writes as it is important for the context of this film. Hoover has taken over a genre I like to call white woman fantasy. Most of her books feature a strong confident female lead who is too encumbered with her success and coolness to be in a relationship. That is until a tall dark and handsome troubled man enters their life and the woman just can’t help but fall in love. It’s not my favorite genre but her books sell a lot of copies and become endlessly shared by stay-at-home moms on Tik Tok. Colleen Hoover has had tremendous success selling these stories, dominating New York Times best seller lists and being named one of Time magazine’s most influential people in 2023.

It Ends With Us falls very much in the same vein as her other books and the film here is a strikingly faithful recreation. I’m going to spoil the plot of It Ends With Us but, cmon, you already know the plot.

Blake Lively plays a super cool independent woman named Lilly Bloom. She’s obsessed with flowers and looks great in overalls. She has finally saved up enough money to open up her own flower shop in the big city. Once and for all leaving behind her suburban Maine roots. She meets a strikingly handsome neurosurgeon with a dark past and they fall madly in love. The only problem, her sexy neurosurgeon with perfect hair and seventeen abs sometimes lets his dark past get the better of him. He occasionally lashes out in violent bursts before quickly apologizing and swearing it’s an accident that will never happen again. Fortunately, Lilly Bloom, the Christian name chosen for this character, can break free by running to her first love. A former homeless teenager who now collects records and owns the number one newest restaurant in Boston. Also, he’s a former Marine who looks so much like Morgan Wallen it’s a little shocking, and her best friend is Jenny Slate.

The resulting movie based on this premise plays like a melodramatic Lifetime movie with better acting and a killer soundtrack. Every scene is perfectly scored by a Lumineers adjacent sounding band or queens of pop like Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey. The camera work and blocking are all solid for what the filmmakers are going for. Expect tons of long lens close-ups and characters perfectly entering scenes. There is a bit of weird hand-camera work that feels odd. My assumption is the cinematographer wanted to add some intensity to the more dramatic scenes. It doesn’t always work but it’s used infrequently enough that it doesn’t really stand out. It’s a technically sound film with a melodramatic narrative.

And honestly, that’s fine. The movie does exactly what it sets out to do. It’s a romantic drama with perfectly serviceable acting and themes of breaking familial trauma that are fully realized by the end. Going in I thought I would have a bigger problem with the film’s rating. I thought it would be irresponsible to create a PG-13 portrayal of domestic violence but shockingly, the film handles this subject with a lot of care. The small bruises that everyone notices, the way one’s memory can downplay small outbursts of violence, the courage and difficulty it finally takes to leave, it’s all handled exceptionally well. My bigger concern was with the writing itself.

As a film, It Ends With Us is very watchable. The plot moves along at a decent cadence, the characters have enough personality to remain entertaining, and the themes come full circle resulting in a satisfying hero arc. But there’s just something about the story that doesn’t sit right with me. In real-life situations of domestic violence, there isn’t a super cool marine veteran with a madly successful restaurant waiting in the wings. The women being hurt don’t always have a thriving business and financial freedom to fall back on. To its credit, the film does a good job of creating conflict in Lily’s decision to leave, but that conflict comes from her being married to a gorgeous neurosurgeon, not the threat of additional violence.

That is why I refer to these books, and now these movies, as fantasy. The fantasy elements are just harder to spot because the film leans so closely to realism that it can be hard to spot all the formalism at play. Instead of knights, we have an incredibly supportive ultra-wealthy best friend. Instead of castles, the film gives us a cute flower shop that’s named one of the best new businesses in Boston. And instead of dragons, we get a strikingly handsome and wealthy doctor. These don’t exist in our real world, but domestic violence surely does.

There is a certain level of care that should be taken with this type of subject matter and It Ends With Us doesn’t always stick the landing. I hope as more of these get made the fantasy elements become easier to spot and serve more as set dressing for the larger themes instead of getting tangled up in them. Objectively though, this isn’t a bad film. It’s cheesy, the characters have ridiculous names, but there’s also a good bit of heart. Blake Lively gives an exceptional performance and the film gives her an arc deserving of her performance.

I’m pleasantly surprised to give this film a 6 and will be cautiously optimistic for the next slew of Colleen Hoover adaptations.