I want to lash out at Quinn Shephard’s “Not Okay” now on Hulu.

I want to lash out because Danni Sanders, played by Zoey Deutch, is me. Ironically, she’s all of us. Too afraid to live, too scared to move, too afraid to . . . . insert any other adjective that intrinsically breathes any meaning into our lives. Danni craves attention, and Shephard’s script acknowledges this. For the record, my script doesn’t have the same outcome as Danni’s – it is still being written.

But I can’t lash out. A truth in Danni and in “Not Okay” speaks volumes because we love to wallow in our own self-hate, or at the very least, an event in our lives triggers our stuck feelings. We love to hate the villain and mistakenly idolize the villainy.

I can’t lash out because there is a truth behind the feelings Danni experiences at the film’s beginning: a sense of worthlessness, not fitting in, and being dismissed. Within the first 10 minutes, I was ready to turn the movie off; Danni was so deep in an emotional hole that I couldn’t bear to watch any more of it.

I pressed on.

I can’t say that Danni is an aspiring writer at her outlet, Depravity. As her editor, Judith (Embeth Davidtz), criticizes an article Danni’s written about her loneliness, I might have found it funny if Danni weren’t screaming for help so loudly. Often, those who need help don’t know how to ask for it, yelling at the top of their lungs until they run out of air. Others don’t necessarily know how to listen to it.

So, the exact opposite happens, true to everything that Danni stands for. In her depression, she fake Insta’s a writers’ retreat to Paris to attract the attention of Dylan O’Brien’s Colin, a walking identity crisis if I’ve ever seen one. Some of the best humor happens with Colin, so stick with it.

The unthinkable happens; everyone’s concerned for her well-being, and Danni mounts a lie on top of another lie.

Shephard engenders others’ initial empathies for Danni, and Danni fiddles her way into unexpected popularity, building on the manufactured reality created in “Not Okay.”

Even though Danni’s voice is primarily manufactured, and Deutch plays this exceptionally well, she latches on to Mia Isaac’s (“Don’t Make Me Go”) Rowan in a group therapy session, which becomes creepy in its own way. Interestingly, Danni becomes a bit of what she seeks as she makes friends with Rowan, an air of truth that prevails upon those who are fed up with the privileged system. Danni’s embrace of her sudden “fame” essentially drowns Rowan’s voice. Several scenes where the two characters form a genuine bond don’t necessarily play out as well as they should. This is not for the lack of on-screen chemistry between Deutch and Isaac; their performances are the film’s strongest aspect. However, the balance between Danni’s insistence on being recognized and Rowan’s truth couldn’t be effectively managed.

Much like the internet, there is too much noise surrounding Danni, and the film’s editing and sound mix make a point of it. The music tracks add context to the emotional moments in the film, but it is Pierre-Philippe Côté’s haunting score that gives Danni emotional heft as she realizes her blunders.

“Not Okay” is perhaps a bit too on the nose with its message; its truth is in the eye of the beholder, something we’ve grasped too tightly in the Internet age. We shame what we can’t understand or disagree with, and we’re shamed because we don’t have a loud enough voice or are not understood.

Those with the courage to speak up are just as easily drowned out, a byproduct of ‘depravity.’ Rowan, who is genuinely marginalized, is scared but has enough courage and conviction to speak her truth, and even in the worst way, it took Danni for her to realize it.

I didn’t mesh well with the overall context of “Not Okay.” The film is far too busy trying to justify its celebrity status and rings hollow as Danni comes to grips with the destruction she’s wrought. Still, “Not Okay” is as much a buzz phrase as it is a hashtag. Will others get something out of it? Perhaps. Admittedly, this writer needed to hear some of the film’s message, and that’s the most crucial aspect of Quinn Shephard’s story. Its dark comedic moments come off as weapons rather than medicine. We advocate for less violence, yet we virtually perpetrate it.

Our own stories are still being written, and self-action needs to be taken, so I’m going to leave this review open-ended. Where are you in your story?