{"id":646346,"date":"2026-06-19T01:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T01:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/646346\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T01:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T01:06:10","slug":"voicemails-for-isabelle-review-netflix-romcom-picks-creepy-over-cute-romance-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/646346\/","title":{"rendered":"Voicemails for Isabelle review \u2013 Netflix romcom picks creepy over cute | Romance films"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a fine line between romantic comedy and creepy thriller, and while redefining the genre\u2019s lovelorn leads as often incredibly oddball stalkers is nothing new (see the Sleepless in Seattle trailer<\/a> recut as a horror movie 20 years ago), an online deluge of memes and thinkpieces have elevated post-movie bar jokes to commonly accepted theory. Some film-makers have slowly tried to catch up and capitalise \u2013 last year\u2019s dark comedy I Love You Forever<\/a> showed how epic acts of romance can be rooted in manipulation while a great deal of what makes current box office record-breaker Obsession<\/a> so effective is its horror movie perversion of the day-to-day realities of all-consuming true love.<\/p>\n

Netflix\u2019s latest romcom Voicemails for Isabelle is made with some awareness of how unsettling its premise is, as if it was originally written in the 2000s and then dusted off and tweaked for the 2020s (the film was originally set to star Hailee Steinfeld back in the 2010s). It\u2019s the story of Jill (Zoey Deutch) who, in the throes of grief for her late sister, starts leaving voicemails on her old phone as a way to feel like she\u2019s still a part of her life. But the number now belongs to a stranger, Wes (Nick Robinson), who decides to not only listen to them but to use the information to track Jill down and insert himself into her life, eventually winning her heart while refusing to be honest about why they\u2019ve met.<\/p>\n

Writer-director Leah McKendrick enjoys winking at us, as if we\u2019re all on the same team, using her characters (and herself playing one of them) to call her leading man a \u201ccreeper\u201d and to refer to the situation as \u201ca sick reboot of You\u2019ve Got Mail\u201d. But, instead of leaning into what\u2019s essentially the set-up for a stalker-thriller, McKendrick tries to have it both ways, poking fun at the weirdness of her meet-cute while also expecting us to bask in the basic, hot chocolate pleasures of it. There are two Taylor Swift songs (surely thanks to her friend Este Haim on soundtrack duty), scenes of our leading lady (who wants to be a pastry chef!) eating Breyers ice-cream with the tub neatly positioned toward the camera, a running in the rain climax and enough overly curated outfit changes to warrant a specially created H&M collection.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

McKendrick wants to transport us back to a time when a film such as this would have been a theatrical wide release while also bringing a modern, poppy sensibility: dating buzzwords like gaslit, secure attachment and love bombing are all scattered in the dialogue. While her film does feel glossy (as one of Sony\u2019s films with the streamer, it looks slicker than the usual), it just doesn\u2019t have the required charm to it and merely pointing out the uneasiness of Wes\u2019s behaviour does not magically make it any less uneasy.<\/p>\n

Rather than reminding us of You\u2019ve Got Mail, as McKendrick would very much like to, it\u2019s more reminiscent of 2023\u2019s rubbishy one-star romcom Love Again<\/a>, which saw Priyanka Chopra Jonas\u2019s grieving caterpillar illustrator (who has a love of placing packets of tropical Skittles in front of the camera) text her dead husband\u2019s phone only to find the messages received and misused by a similarly creepy stranger. That film was at least genuinely hysterically awful whereas Voicemails for Isabelle is too middle of the road to count as a five-wines-in hoot.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also something a little smug about the self-referential tone, the many nods toward specific romcoms and the genre at large (\u201cThis is the scene where you run,\u201d someone tells a character at the end) showing, sure, an extensive awareness of the tropes, but also a total inability to do anything interesting with them. Shouldn\u2019t a film made by someone with such clear affection for and such deep knowledge of the genre be a great deal smarter than this?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve found Deutch to be an engaging romcom lead in Amazon\u2019s Christmas trifle Something at Tiffany\u2019s<\/a>, a very game buffoon in the scattershot spoof Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass<\/a> and, most recently, an expert chatshow guest of five star viral moments<\/a>, but she struggles to find any centre here with a character that is affected, self-conscious quirk over relatable character detail. There\u2019s also really no believable process of why her character would fall so intensely, McKendrick relying on a lazy montage to do a lot of the early stage heavy-lifting. A production line Robinson is far too indistinctive to convince us or realistically her, a character telling him he is \u201cno Tom Hanks\u201d proving to be one of the film\u2019s truest observations.<\/p>\n

At an unacceptable length of almost two hours, the film tries to both downplay the need for romance (\u201cI don\u2019t need a man!\u201d Jill says near the end, echoing a Pussycat Doll circa 2005) and pretend we\u2019re watching a woman reach self-actualisation through her career (imagine!) while then also resorting to exactly the hackneyed and unearned \u201cof course\u201d ending we expect. In trying to scratch our itch for the old while also recognising the new, McKendrick settles for something stale.<\/p>\n