One day while working as a waitress, Zola (Taylour Paige) hits it off with an odd customer, a stripper named Stefani (Riley Keough), and the two strike up a fast friendship. Stefani invites Zola on a spontaneous road trip with her boyfriend Derrek (Nick Braun) and “roommate” X (Colman Domingo), to participate in the Florida exotic-dancing scene. Zola thinks this could be fun and potentially-lucrative trip. However, if Zola hadn’t already regretted her decision when she first got into the car with Stefani and the others, she most certainly does when she later realizes that X is actually Stefani’s pimp, and this is a “work” trip. Stefani obviously knew this, and conveniently left out these details when she asked Zola to join her. While Zola enjoyed dancing for dollars, she refuses to trick herself out, and just wants to go home. However, X won’t let her leave, so she decides she’s at least going to help Stefani get what she’s worth. Stefani’s idiot boyfriend didn’t even know the true nature of this trip, and ends up accidentally attracting the attention of some Tampa gangsters, which puts the group in a dangerous and deadly situation. If Zola manages to survive this seemingly-endless wild and crazy weekend, she’s looking forward to never seeing these people ever again!

@Zola is a dark comedy/cautionary tale based on a viral Twitter story posted in 2015 by A’Ziah-Monae “Zola” King. I was not familiar with this story at all before checking out the movie, but it’s pretty clear right from the opening line what type of movie this is going to be, as Zola tells the audience, “Y’all wanna hear the story of how me and this bitch fell out. It’s kind of long but it’s full of suspense.” Zola provides this narration periodically during the film, commenting on the crazy things that are happening, usually quoting one of the original tweets verbatim. It’s an awkward and wild weekend, and even she can’t believe what she’s seeing most of the time.

I had mixed feelings about this film as I didn’t really find most of these characters very likeable…though that may be the point. Stefani is loud and crass, and has no filter when it comes to her racial biases and prejudices, speaking in an offensive Blaccent—it’s a wonder how she and Zola even became friends in the first place. Stefani is all about putting on the right persona for social media, and this has allowed her to be taken advantage of by X. X is constantly slipping between his American and Nigerian accents. In one moment he can be fun and friendly, but in the next he’s angry and no-nonsense. He pretends to care about Stefani, but all he’s really concerned with is how much money she can make for him, and he would abandon her the moment she’s no longer profitable. He sees the stronger, more independent Zola as a bit of a threat, especially when she proves she can do his job of marketing Stefani better than he can. And then there’s Derrek, who is initially clueless as to the real reason for the trip. He amuses himself with endless stupid internet videos, which he constantly tries to share with an annoyed Zola. Once he learns the truth about what’s going on, he starts to stress out, and have a mental breakdown. Meanwhile, Zola is stuck in this hellish “vacation”, and must deal with these crazy people until its finally time to go home. She tries to make the best of it attempting to help Stefani, but this just puts her into even more awkward situations—like standing in the hotel bedroom as Stefani makes her way through an endless stream of old, unattractive and desperate Johns—as well as a very dangerous one.

The way the film is edited was a bit too artsy and odd for me at times. It would sometimes cut to these random scenes with Zola and Stefani in a room full of mirrors, almost like ballet dancers preparing for a performance. And the filmmakers also have a bit of a perverse nature, with the film including a montage of the “packages” of the Johns, and several scenes involving people going to the bathroom (which they apparently put a lot of thought into as they note in the commentary how Zola is obviously more hydrated than Stefani, and is also unwilling to sit on the seat). The film also has a very specific aesthetic, which I personally did not care for—colors are very washed out, and the film gets quite grainy at times. This made it difficult to grade the quality of the video presentation on the Blu-ray release. The look was a bit inconsistent as well—scenes where characters are outside during the daytime with natural light look bright and pristine, but as soon as things move inside or into lower light, the picture really suffers. It was difficult to distinguish between desired look and poor presentation.

As for the audio, dialogue remains clear throughout, and the film makes use of an interesting score, which ranges from harp music to club music, to rap, and more. However, one aspect of the soundtrack that I found quite irritating was this Tweet whistle that occurs at seemingly-random times throughout the film. I couldn’t figure out what the purpose was—I wasn’t sure if this was going off any time Zola said something verbatim from one of the original Tweets, or if it was something else. The first time this happens is when Zola and Stefani first meet in the diner, and in the commentary, the director states that this is signaling when their attraction kicks off. However, this doesn’t really fly as a general rule, as the sound goes off even in scenes where only Zola is on screen. The sound effect just became distracting after a while, like an alarm clock you wanted to mute or turn off but couldn’t.

The Blu-ray disc comes packed in a standard HD keepcase, with a slipcover. The case includes redemption instructions for an HD (non-Movies Anywhere) digital copy of the film. The disc contains an audio commentary by the writer/director and editor of the film, along with a 12-minute behind-the-scenes featurette with the cast/creators, and about 6 minutes of deleted scenes with optional commentary.

What’s Included:

Film: (1:25:55)

Blu-ray:

• 1080p / Widescreen 1.85:1
• Audio: English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
• Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish

Digital (Code subject to expiration, may not be valid after 9/14/2022):

• HD Digital Copy redeemable via Vudu or Google Play (not Movies Anywhere compatible)

Extras:

• Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Janicza Bravo and Editor Joi McMillon (1:25:55)
  Director/co-writer Janicza Bravo and editor Joi McMillon provide an audio commentary for the film, discussing the origins of the movie, the cast, some of the inspirations—such as Romeo+Juliet & The Wizard of Oz—the awkwardness of shooting the sex scenes, Easter eggs, how some scenes changed over time, and more. Some of this is repetitive to the featurette. I found this commentary to be extremely disappointing overall. There are some very large gaps where the women are completely silent, which was quite frustrating, especially when they would disappear for the @Stefani scene, only to return right afterwards to talk about a more-generic driving scene that didn’t involve any of the characters. Editor Joi McMillon is also constantly cackling throughout most of the time they are actually talking.
• Y’all Wanna Hear a Story: Making @Zola (12:37)
  The cast and creators discuss the story, the original Twitter feed, the characters, working with one another, finding the right balance and accents for their characters, and more. Includes interviews with executive producer A’Ziah “Zola” King, director/writer Janicza Bravo, and stars Taylour Paige (“Zola”), Riley Keough (“Stefani”), Colman Domingo (“X”) & Nicholas Braun (“Derrek”).
• Deleted Scenes (5:37)
  Collection of 5 deleted scenes play back-to-back with optional audio commentary from writer/director Janicza Bravo and editor Joi McMillon, who explain the context of and reasons for removing each scene. Presented in windowboxed format. There was nothing really major lost here, except maybe a scene with Brett Gelman (the director’s ex-husband) and three other characters that don’t appear in the final film at all.
• Also From A24 (4:49)
  Trailers for The Green Knight and Minari play back-to-back.

Final Thoughts:

While I did enjoy several moments from this film (more-so the second time around while watching with the commentary), it’s likely one I’m not going to revisit very often. I’m sure there will be some folks who love this movie and laugh-out-loud at the wild and crazy antics—it’s certainly a crazy story and hard to believe it’s based on real events. Taylour Paige gives a really strong performance as Zola, but the other characters were a bit too over-the-top to find them believable…though it does take place in Florida. It’s a creative idea to try to take a Twitter story and adapt it into a movie, and worth a look just for the wild story. I am not generally an A24 fan as their films tend to be a bit too artsy for my taste, and I think that was also the case here—the grainy, washed-out look made it difficult for me to grade the quality of the disc presentation. While fans of the film will want to pick this up for behind-the-scenes discussions and deleted scenes, new viewers may want to check out a rental first.