While hardly the first to do it, Richard Linklater’s masterful execution of the walk-and-talk two-hander with 1995’s Before Sunrise ushered in a wave of similarly structured films that sought to capture the specific intimacy and hesitancy of a burgeoning potential relationship. In the years since that Linklater release, films as diverse as Columbus, Medicine for Melancholy, and Once have spun up their own variations on this small-scale but potent formula. But sitting as we now are 30 years later, though, the notion of such a meet-cute is nearly impossible to imagine. Boomers might be the active architects of our planet’s fast-approaching death, but they do occasionally get some things right: we are all too engrossed in our phones, social media, and the Internet writ large to ever occasion such encounters in the wild — nearly 80% of people 18-29 use Tinder, and that’s just one of the many apps available to screen and curate your opportunities for romantic connection. How can a film in 2025 authentically capture the magic that existed before we were all so self-involved?
Directed by Jeffrey Scotti Schroeder and written by stars Mary Neely and Kareem Rahma, Or Something is a solid attempt to rekindle that magic. When Olivia (Neely) and Amir (Rahma) both show up at Teddy’s (Brandon Wardell) to collect money he owes them, they are subsequently sent on an adventure of sorts to find Uptown Mike, whom Teddy promises will have their money. Weaving their way from Brooklyn to Harlem, the pair navigates awkward silences and tense conversations. When Olivia’s phone dies — a perhaps overly convenient way around the ever-present Internet of our age — she is forced to actually interact with Amir. On the subway, they have a tense conversation (nothing like Rahma’s SubwayTakes Instagram series) in which Amir says he just doesn’t talk to women anymore because he’s worried about being accused of harassment. After reaching Uptown Mike’s house and discovering that he doesn’t get off work for a few more hours, they head to a diner where Olivia talks about not wanting to be called “hot” because, in the social media age, the term seems to have lost all its meaning.
These are perhaps familiar discursive path to travel, but Or Something‘s strength is in how well-written these conversations are, and how authentically they’re carried by the performances of Neely and Rahma. The combination grounds Or Something in a lo-fi realism that allows it to believably transcend the contextual trappings of its time, resisting any nostalgia-baiting or artificial throwback fetishization by having its characters fall ass backwards into a circumstance they likewise seem to understand to be a relic in our modern world. And as the film continues, the duo grows more personal with their conversations, each revealing the reason behind their need to collect money from Teddy. It truly captures an earnest, almost quaint experience of meeting someone in a pre-Internet style that the self-curatorial culture of the 21st century doesn’t allow for much anymore.
Or Something does stumble a bit when it comes to its ending, which hinges on what could ungenerously be called a “twist” in that hidden motivations are revealed and the film feels, for the first time, manufactured. This revelation works mostly to rupture the looseness that the rest of the film has successfully established, leaving the viewer with almost too much — Or Something is the kind of film where the ever-divisive ambiguous ending wouldn’t have just served its purpose better, but would have felt organic in doing so. Still, while never ideal to go out with a groan, the sum of Or Something remains an appealing, surprising concoction of earnest humanism and believable present-day dialoguing. Just make sure your phone is silenced when you hit play — this is a pair of people worth spending intentional time with.
DIRECTOR: Jeffrey Scott Schroeder; CAST: Mary Neely, Kareem Rahma, Brandon Wardell, David Zayas; DISTRIBUTOR: Factory 25; IN THEATERS: August 22; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 20 min.
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