Rating: R | Runtime: 118 minutes
Release Date: October 6th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Rialto Pictures
Director(s): Susanna Fogel
Writer(s): Michelle Ashford / Kristen Roupenian (short story)

Things have changed on the surface, which means they haven’t really changed at all.

I honestly don’t know what the hoopla was surrounding Kristen Roupenian’s short story Cat Person back in 2017. I try to avoid situations when people get so up in arms about a meme that they’re willing to dig trenches in the name of their polarizing view of it. So, I’m coming at it from a completely untainted perspective as far as that conversation went when I say it was … fine. Good even. It presents a seemingly “normal” (albeit unorthodox) relationship scenario that becomes warped by the inherent power dynamic shifts within. How does fear and paranoia dictate actions as a result? Could honesty sometimes make things worse?

Director Susanna Fogel and screenwriter Michelle Ashford cinematic adaptation understands those questions and seeks to answer them too. They go so far as to drop a bomb any time the original short story allowed for nuance, turning a rather straightforward narrative that gets its point across via character reactions alone into a comic thriller that creates a new character with which to ensure its intentions are screamed from the top of its soapbox. And while my saying that makes it appear like I think it’s an utter failure: I don’t. As an eighty-minute transformation across artistic mediums, it’s actually quite effective.

Here’s the issue: Cat Person isn’t an eighty-minute film. It’s two hours long. And while the extra stuff added in to stretch Roupenian’s words to that eighty-minute mark are interesting in their ability to both question and critique the text, the third act is bonkers in its intentional decision to turn the whole into an exploitative scree that may tip so far over the line as to mock PC-culture and completely subvert the otherwise complex nature of the romance between twenty-year-old Margot (Emilia Jones) and thirty-something Robert (Nicholas Braun). To quote the later, “It’s not a vampire film.”

My assumption here—having not been involved in that conversation six years ago—is that Fogel and Ashford are injecting the fervor surrounding the viral response into the text too. While adding things like Margot’s feminist forum moderator, hermit BFF (Geraldine Viswanathan’s Taylor) or her mother’s (Hope Davis) creepy birthday celebration for her stepfather (Christopher Shyer) or her professor’s (Isabella Rossellini) ant colony work because they’re woven into the existing plot (even if they feel a bit forced), the third act is an entirely different beast consisting of the discordant philosophical demands the internet surely projected upon it.

So, maybe I’d have enjoyed that choice more if I was more aware of what actually happened to make the world take notice in 2017. As is, however, it did lose me somewhat since it more or less takes a perfect ending (the weight of Roupenian’s closing quote as both a mark of finality and open-ended debate starter where intent, emotion, and pettiness are concerned truly sold the piece for me) and drags it through the muddy waters of loud personalities on both sides of a topic that loses impact as a result of that volume. Not enough to make me sour on the whole, but enough to give me pause.

Because outside that new conclusion, Cat Person does what it must to be effective. It amps up the awkwardness of Margot and Robert’s courtship and refuses to shy from the mortifying sexual experiences that result. Both Jones and Braun are all-in on that perspective, bringing the duality of shared moments and hyper fixation born from desire to life in relatably funny and cringeworthy fashion. Did Fogel and Ashford have to go so hard to drive things home? Considering the rise in toxic masculinity and sexual abuse in this country, maybe they did. I simply think the short is better for not sensationalizing things so blatantly.

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Emilia Jones and Nicholas Braun in CAT PERSON; courtesy of StudioCanal & Rialto Pictures.