Sierra Burgess Is a Loser

The mid-to-late 2010s were a strange, experimental time for the romantic comedy. After years of the genre being relegated to the "direct-to-bargain-bin" shadows, Netflix single-handedly revived the teen-com with a flurry of "Originals" that felt like they were designed by an algorithm fed exclusively on John Hughes scripts and Instagram filters. I remember watching Sierra Burgess Is a Loser on a humid Tuesday night while my neighbor was very loudly trying to learn the bagpipes—the discordant drone of the pipes actually served as a fitting soundtrack for a film that tries to hit a high note but ends up somewhere much more uncomfortable.

Released in 2018, this film arrived at the absolute peak of the Noah Centineo "Internet’s Boyfriend" era. Fresh off the success of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Centineo was the golden boy of the streaming world, and Netflix was eager to cash in. But where his previous hit was a sugary, harmless delight, Sierra Burgess is a much stranger, darker beast that doesn't seem to realize it’s a horror movie disguised as a high school romance.

The Cyrano Glitch in the Matrix

The plot is a modern-day riff on Cyrano de Bergerac. We have Sierra (Shannon Purser, the internet’s beloved Barb from Stranger Things), an intelligent, band-geek underdog who doesn’t fit the narrow "hot girl" mold of her high school. Through a series of contrivances involving the school’s resident mean girl, Veronica (Kristine Froseth), Sierra ends up texting Jamey (Noah Centineo), a sweet-natured quarterback from a rival school who thinks he’s talking to the popular Veronica.

What follows is an hour and forty-five minutes of elaborate catfishing. While the film wants us to root for the "smart girl" finally getting the guy, I found myself increasingly alarmed by Sierra’s tactics. The film treats identity theft like a quirky personality trait. Instead of a gentle story about inner beauty, we get a protagonist who hacks social media accounts, manipulates her friends, and—in the film’s most infamous scene—pranks her crush by pretending to be deaf. It’s a bold choice for a character we’re supposed to find "relatable," and it sparked a firestorm of social media discourse upon release that hasn't really died down since.

A Masterclass in Supporting Stealers

If there is a reason to watch this film today—and there is, if only to witness the exact moment the "Netflix Teen Formula" started to glitch—it is Kristine Froseth. As Veronica, Froseth takes what could have been a cardboard-cutout antagonist and turns her into the most interesting person on screen. Her character arc, which involves a strained relationship with her image-obsessed mother (Chrissy Metz, of This Is Us fame), feels far more grounded and earned than the central romance.

Veronica is the only person in this movie who actually deserves a hug. The chemistry between her and Sierra is actually much more compelling than the romance between Sierra and Jamey. In fact, there’s an entire subculture of fans who argue the movie should have just leaned into a queer romance between the two leads. Instead, we get Noah Centineo doing his best "confused puppy" impression, which he does well, even if the script requires him to be unnervingly forgiving of being lied to for months. RJ Cyler, playing Sierra’s best friend Dan, also deserves a medal for trying to inject some genuine wit into a script that often feels like it was written by someone who has only ever seen high school through a telescope.

The Legacy of the "Problematic Fave"

Director Ian Samuels and writer Lindsey Anderson Beer clearly intended for this to be a "Just be you" anthem, as the tagline suggests. But in the context of the 2018 cultural landscape, the film became a fascinating case study in how "representation" can go wrong. It’s one of the few contemporary films that became a cult classic not because it was hidden, but because it was so widely seen and so widely criticized.

Interestingly, the song "Sunflower," which Sierra performs in the film, was actually co-written by the screenwriter herself and became a genuine hit on Spotify. It’s a beautiful, melancholic track that captures the "inner beauty" theme the movie thinks it’s exploring. It’s just a shame the actual narrative involves a non-consensual kiss in a park—another plot point that made 2018 Twitter explode with rage.

Apparently, Noah Centineo filmed this before his breakout role in To All the Boys, but it was released afterward to capitalize on his fame. This bit of scheduling genius meant that millions of fans went in expecting a lighthearted romp and came out wondering if the protagonist belonged in a psych ward. It’s that exact cognitive dissonance that makes the movie worth a look for any student of 21st-century pop culture.

Sierra Burgess Is a Loser is a fascinating artifact of the early streaming boom, a film where the aesthetics are polished to a high gloss but the moral compass is spinning wildly out of control. It fails as a traditional romance because the central relationship is built on a foundation of lies that the movie never fully reckons with. However, as a showcase for Kristine Froseth’s talent and a time capsule of the "Centineo Summer," it’s an essential, if deeply cringeworthy, watch. It’s the kind of movie you watch with friends just so you can pause it every ten minutes and shout, "Wait, she did what?"