Regretting You

I’m convinced there’s a specific frequency of "sad girl" cinema that only resonates when the weather turns just cold enough to justify a second cardigan. Regretting You vibrates at exactly that frequency. Released in the early shuffle of 2025, it arrived with the pedigree of a blockbuster tear-jerker—directed by Josh Boone (who famously broke everyone's hearts with The Fault in Our Stars) and adapted from the Colleen Hoover bibliography—yet it has already begun to fade into that strange digital purgatory of "recommended for you" lists. I watched this on my tablet while waiting for a plumber who never showed up, and honestly, the simmering resentment of my own domestic situation was the perfect appetizer for the Grant family’s catastrophic meltdown.

The Ghost of BookTok Past

The film centers on Morgan Grant (Allison Williams) and her daughter Clara (Mckenna Grace). Morgan was a teen mom who put her own life on hold to raise a daughter who now, at sixteen, finds her mother’s presence about as welcome as a software update. When a tragic accident claims the life of Morgan’s husband, Chris (Scott Eastwood), the subsequent discovery of a massive betrayal turns their grief into a battlefield.

It’s a premise that screams "airport novel," but Josh Boone treats it with a surprisingly restrained, almost autumnal dignity. He isn't interested in the histrionics you might expect from the source material’s reputation. Instead, he focuses on the quiet, jagged edges of shared trauma. Allison Williams, leaning away from the icy precision she mastered in Get Out and M3GAN, gives us a Morgan who is perpetually on the verge of vibrating out of her own skin. She’s brittle, exhausted, and—dare I say—the emotional equivalent of a weighted blanket that's accidentally been soaked in lukewarm tea. It’s a performance that deserves more eyes than it ultimately got.

A Generational Friction Burn

The real soul of the movie, however, belongs to Mckenna Grace. Having spent years playing the "younger version" of every A-list actress in Hollywood, Grace finally commands the screen as a teenager who is rightfully furious at the world. Her chemistry with Mason Thames (who plays Miller, the boy across the street) provides the film’s lighter, more hopeful counterpoint. Thames brings a grounded, slightly awkward charm that feels light-years removed from the hyper-polished "CW-style" teenagers we’ve grown accustomed to in the streaming era.

Then there’s Dave Franco as Jonah, the blast from Morgan’s past who reappears at the worst possible moment. Franco has spent much of the last decade leaning into his comedic timing, so seeing him here—looking like he wandered off the set of a prestige coffee commercial—is a bit of a shock to the system. He handles the "kindly former flame" role with enough sincerity to keep it from feeling like a plot device, even if the script by Susan McMartin (who wrote the similarly teary After) pushes him into some fairly predictable corners.

Why This Vanished So Quickly

So, why aren't we talking about this more? Regretting You suffered from what I call "The Middle-Budget Trap." With a $30 million price tag, it was too expensive to be an indie darling and too quiet to compete with the franchise behemoths of 2025. It’s a film about people talking in rooms, about the "messy middle" of motherhood, and about the way we curate our lives for the people we love. In an era of franchise saturation, a mid-tier drama like this often gets "dumped" by the studio if it doesn't have an immediate, viral hook.

There was also a bit of a marketing identity crisis. The trailers pitched it as a forbidden romance, but the actual film is a grueling, introspective look at mother-daughter resentment. If you went in looking for The Notebook, you probably left feeling like you’d just sat through a very expensive therapy session. The production itself was smooth, but rumors persisted that the studio hacked away at the final act to keep it under two hours, which explains why some of the supporting characters—like Sam Morelos’s Lexie—feel like they’re missing three or four crucial scenes.

The cinematography by Tim Orr, who previously worked with Boone on the underrated Stuck in Love, gives the film a rich, textured look that feels much more expensive than its budget. It’s a shame this was pushed so quickly toward streaming services, as the wide shots of the Grant house and the interplay of light during the funeral scenes were clearly meant for the big screen.

In the end, Regretting You is a film that functions best as a quiet discovery. It’s not a masterpiece, and it’s certainly not going to redefine the genre, but it treats its characters with a level of empathy that’s becoming increasingly rare. It captures that specific, agonizing moment when a child realizes their parent is just a flawed, frightened person—and when a parent realizes their child is a stranger. It’s a beautifully shot, well-acted "what-if" that I suspect will eventually find a cult following among those who stumble upon it at 2:00 AM on a Tuesday. Give it a shot before the algorithms bury it for good.