‘Miller’s Girl’ Is a Filthy, Fun Throwback to Hot-for-Teacher Thrillers

Making any actor say the words, “I am 18 and entirely unremarkable,” should already be punishable by some sort of cinematic ordinance; society has only barely escaped the clutches of the worst Wattpad and Tumblr fanfiction clichés. But giving that line to Jenna Ortega, one of the most promising young actors today, is downright unforgivable. Well, it would be unforgivable if Ortega weren’t skilled enough to transcend even the most banal material.

Ortega’s latest film, Miller’s Girl (now in theaters), is chock-full of these overwrought bromides. Hell, the film itself—about a cunning high school student who seduces her English teacher with her precocious literary knowledge—is one big platitude, slathered on top of a pastiche pancake. You’ve seen this movie before, even if the premise’s popularity has faded a bit since the ’90s. There’s Wild Things, Poison Ivy, The Crush, Notes on a Scandal, and Election, just to name a few. These and dozens of other thrillers share the same thematic outline: The young person meets the authority figure, the young person seduces the authority figure, and the young person reduces the authority figure to sniveling ruin with clever wit beyond their years.

But just because this subgenre is tired doesn’t mean that it can’t still be entertaining. In fact, despite all of its flowery dialogue and predictable twists, Miller’s Girl manages to be just that. The film hits all of the familiar beats, but goes a few steps further when it comes to twisting the knife (even if the blade is metaphorical). These appealing new trimmings go a long way in reviving a stale genre, and, combined with Ortega’s hypnotizing performance opposite an always-game Martin Freeman, Miller’s Girl could very well bring back the taboo psychosexual drama.

When that “18 and entirely unremarkable” line drops at the very top of the film, it’s tempting to immediately write Miller’s Girl off as little more than self-indulgent, horny trash. What’s yet to come is already barrelling toward the viewer at Mach speed; why stick around for the obvious? Well, for one thing, there’s the rest of this silly narrated monologue, delivered as Ortega’s character, Cairo Sweet (a thriller name for the books), walks to her grand Tennessee public high school, which seems to look and operate much more like a college. All of these elements are just an inch out of place from believability, which is the place where any decently nasty thriller should stand.

“Literature is my solace in the solitude, and writing is my means of escape,” Cairo tells us, making sure to mention that her parents up and left her in their sprawling, Southern Gothic mansion when she was a few years younger. Cairo’s starting a new semester, which means she and her equally incorrigible best friend, Winnie (Gideon Adlon), can take Jonathan Miller’s (Freeman) classic literature class. Jonathan is—surprise, surprise—a failed writer-turned-English teacher, whom Cairo takes a shine to after reading his only book. Even though Jonathan is married, he can’t help but be charmed by his new star pupil, who devoured the semester’s entire 12-book reading list over the break.

Can you guess what the state of Jonathan’s marriage is like? You got it: not good! The film’s writer-director Jade Halley Bartlett makes no efforts to circumnavigate clichés. Instead, she opts to amplify them in ways that are not as commonplace. Bartlett wastes no time letting Cairo and Winnie enter a perverted pact of mutual school teacher seduction, with Winnie suggestively dropping her books (and several hints) to the school’s gym teacher, Coach Fillmore (Bashir Salahuddin). This kind of double-whammy approach to provoking audiences works like a charm, especially when Winnie—who bears a nasty oral fixation that keeps her perennially hungry—delivers a riveting soliloquy about a young woman’s right to procure her first lover, comparing the penis to different cuts of meat. The older, more experienced phalluses are, of course, wagyu beef.

The middle stretch wears its thematic inspirations less elegantly, becoming bogged down by Bartlett’s repeated attempts to convey the stickiness of the film’s humid Tennessee setting. Needless to say: Body Heat, this is not. A single caught-in-the-rain sequence would do nicely without being bookended by slow-burning scenes of Cairo and Jonathan sharing cigarettes and getting cozy while discussing literature. Cairo’s conquest of Jonathan loses its steam in these moments, and Bartlett lets the tension of her film be diffused without putting up a fight.

But it’s hard to discount the moments where Bartlett gets the genre so right, like when she refuses to pull her punches in scenes of erotic description or in the absolutely cruel, cutting dialogue exchanged by Jonathan and his more successful alcoholic wife, Beatrice (Dagmara Domincyzk). Jonathan’s midterm assignment for his class—to write a story in the style of another author—inspires Cairo to make her move, mimicking one of the most banned authors in history: Henry Miller (double entendre alert!). Ortega and Freeman are unafraid to go to the hilt when reading Cairo’s finished story aloud, and their lascivious narrated descriptions are enough to shock even the most open-minded viewers, present company included.

Those scenes give Miller’s Girl the necessary punch that it needs to be memorable amidst all of its hokiness. And while the lengths of Cairo’s forbidden temptation never go quite as far as they should to create a truly wicked piece of work, there’s enough here to chew on for fans of the fading psychosexual thriller. Sure, there’s more sex than psychosis here. But in that imbalance, Bartlett manages to craft a story that’s just absurd enough to still be plausible. A little credibility can go a long way when it comes to getting under the skin.