Maika Monroe has quickly become a modern-day “scream queen.” She’s been consistently good in her performances in horror films like Longlegs and It Follows. Neither of those films had the most original plots when you consider movies like Se7en or The Ring, respectively. Nonetheless, Monroe’s performances helped elevate her films to make them worth a watch, despite their flaws. Significant Other is yet another movie that plays on the bodysnatcher premise of an alien capable of perfectly imitating people, which then raises the question: Does it benefit from Monroe’s magic?

Pros

Good acting from the cast
The musical score is good
Most effects look decent
A bait and switch that doesn’t suck
Under 90 minutes long
Funny moments in the second act to break up the horror

Cons

Certain mechanics and choices made by characters don’t make sense
Frustrating invincibility robs a character of a victorious moment
Pacing is inconsistent
The realization of an imitating alien could have been more interesting
The musical score has to do some heavy lifting to establish tone and atmosphere that is sometimes lacking
A few too many lame jump scares

Plot & Thoughts

Ruth (Maika Monroe) and Harry (Jake Lacy) are on a backpacking trip together in the Pacific Northwest. The two of them have been dating for a while and share a sense of humor that keeps them both smiling in each other’s company, even when one might be annoyed. They’re having a great time on their trip until Harry brings Ruth to a lone cliffside overlooking the ocean. She enjoys the view, but when he gets down on one knee to ask for her hand in marriage, she has a panic attack, and we learn that she has some reservations about the idea due to extensive trauma from her youth.

Harry’s proposal attempt sours the trip, even as they do their best to keep things from getting too awkward, but strange things start occurring the longer they stay there. One night, Ruth sees a deer behaving oddly. Another night, they find a deer’s corpse that has some weird stuff on its body. After one of them wanders off and returns, they start acting distant and stranger than usual. Unbeknownst to either of them, something fell from the sky before they got there, and it isn’t friendly.

Significant Other is something of a likable mixed bag. On one hand, some qualities, like acting, music, direction, and cinematography, are all really good. Both of its leading actors do a great job at making you believe that these are two quirky people who love each other dearly with their inside jokes and fake insults, but who struggle to communicate when an actual fight happens. The music is ominous and does a lot in the first act to remind you that something is wrong, despite how happy Ruth and Harry seem to be in their beautiful surroundings. When Ruth has her panic attack, the camera gets close, and everything is muted except for her breathing, convincingly simulating the experience of getting lightheaded.

On the other hand, the pacing is somewhat inconsistent, making a movie that is under 90 minutes long feel longer than it should. The first act moves rather slowly and has a few disappointing jump scares to pad out the experience. The second act, when suspicion arises, moves almost too quickly. Shocking moments happen in this portion of the movie, and it’s when things really start to get interesting; however, the period before the big twist is revealed is so brief that you don’t get to really relish the potential paranoia that works so well in movies like The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Still, when the second act hits, Significant Other gets interesting and mostly stays that way till its end.

Despite it being slower in the first half and the use of cheap jump scares, I still think it’s enjoyable due to its convincing cast and the assumption of looming terror getting closer to the protagonists. When the bait and switch happened, I was not necessarily surprised, but I think it was still a successful moment that pivoted the pace and the tone of the film in a positive way. As the story progresses, there are moments of gore contrasting with comedy, which might rub some people the wrong way, but I found them genuinely entertaining.

Where I had issues was in the nature of how the alien imitation worked. We get to see a process involving the transformation that looks interesting, but what exactly is happening is unclear in a way that I didn’t fully understand the stakes of the scene. I also didn’t like the fact that it seemed a little too powerful an entity. I find all-powerful, invulnerable villains to be rather boring, and there is a moment where the humans get the upper hand in a manner that is set up well, but, for whatever reason, the movie decides to let the alien recover from it when the same ending could have occured and been just as effective had they allowed the humans a moment of victory. It’s a horror movie, so I guess they just wanted to keep it as bleak as possible.

TL;DR

Once again, Maika Monroe stars in a horror movie that manages to be pretty entertaining, even with its flaws and less-than-original premise. It may have a slow start and a few too many fakeouts at first, but things pick up in the second half, and there are a few entertaining surprises to make up for it. With its relatively short runtime, Significant Other is a decent movie with some good acting and interesting moments to make it worth a watch.

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