Not Okay: Delusions of Grandeur At Its Finest, A Short Essay

A month later, and the Not Okay movie is still stuck in my brain! It truly shows the extent of someone’s delusions to gain fame in our lead Danni.

It’s no shame to admit that many want to get a chance at the spotlight. But with Danni Sanders, she doesn’t simply want it, she craves it. She craves to be successful at her job. To get the attention of Colin, to be someone in front of everyone else. When she sees a chance to get it, she takes it.

Throughout the movie, her fame is shaped as this type of whirlwind of delusion. Which is what makes this movie interesting, you see this girl transform from a low to a high, but it’s all fake. She uses someone else, their stories, their trauma — via Rowan, and remixes her lies to press a story that wasn’t hers to tell. It’s like her delusions didn’t have a boundary, a point to stop at. Everyone, even herself, got sucked into it.

To take from Rowan’s performance at the end, “And you never thought to stop?”. As things got more and more intense, Danni never stopped lying. Not for even a minute, does she ever stop to think of the consequences of her actions. The only time she’s really seen to actually have a conscience, is when Rowan panics at a rally. Or when she’s confronted during the height of her lies: Yet, still she never comes clean. No, instead she runs away.

And this is the most glaring point of Danni’s character. She’s stolen and lied to make her life something that is not, and has profited off of it. This is not far from how people act today, telling other people stories that aren’t their own for profit and not realizing, or rather, not caring about how that story isn’t for them to tell. However, even if it gets out that their stories isn’t their, they still given grace because like Danni, they’re white, and are given another chance.

But the funny thing about Not Okay, is that Danni, while shown to be unredeemable, stays unredeemable. There’s no acceptable turnaround that makes everything go back to being good. Everyone and everything that she gained, is lost. She loses her job, her fame, and Rowan. Even her parents are disappointed in her. There’s no sad music to make us feel bad for Danni or another character that comforts her. No, it leaves it to us to say whether or not the accountability that Danni’s shown is good enough.

And that’s okay.