Dear Evan Hansen Is A Menace

Famously, I am terrified of horror movies. Like as in I have to loiter outside the theatre during the previews because I am so paranoid that a trailer for something even remotely scary will come on. Like as in before I saw the movie I am about to discuss, I BOOKED it out of the theatre because a singing monkey in the upcoming "Sing 2" gave me a "bad vibe". However, I somehow overcame that fear last Tuesday and saw the world's most terrifying film, featuring the most harrowing protagonist I have ever encountered. From the twisted mind of Steven Chbosky, comes "Dear Evan Hansen", a film that was if you took Logic's 2017 hit, "1-800-273-8255" (who can relate? Woo!") but instead of Khalid motivating you not to kill yourself over the span of four minutes, a 18 year old boy makes you want to end it all over the span of two hours.

Dear Evan Hansen follows what looks to have been the ghost of Ben Platt (more on this later) as he manipulates his way into a grieving family's home in order to fuck their daughter. The film begins with Dear Evan Hansen, a high school senior suffering from an unspecified mental illness, whose therapist has encouraged him to write notes of affirmation to himself starting with "Dear Evan Hansen..." which is definitely an interesting therapeutic tool but then again my high school therapist used to steal me book manuscripts of unreleased YA novels written by her friends so I could relate to the characters so who am I to judge? Anyways, through a series of "accidents", one of his letters gets into the hands of this guy wearing the Troubled Kid Jacket (tm) (you know which jacket I'm talking about) and out of anger, Connor (Troubled Kid) ends up stuffing the note into his pocket. However, the next day, Dear Evan Hansen is called into the principal's office where Troubled Connor's parents (Amy Adams and Detective Amaro from SVU) are there to unceremoniously tell this teenage stranger that their son has killed himself and left behind only a suicide note written to Dear Evan Hansen. Clearly, this is the note DEH (Dear Evan Hansen) wrote the day before, but unlike any normal human being, our "protagonist" decides to omit this glaringly obvious fact and accept a dinner invitation to their home. From there, DEH becomes close with not only Troubled Connor's parents, but Connor's younger sister, Zoe, whom DEH has had a crush on for years. After singing a song essentially saying "we are not gonna explain why we actually like each other, as the screenwriter for the film has provided no evidence of anything we have in common, but we need to reassure the audience it isn't about my dead brother whom I believe, at this time, was best friends with this stranger my parents have let into our family", the two begin dating. DEH also somehow becomes the face of stopping teenage suicide through a video that goes viral, furthering his social gains. Ultimately, this all crashes down on DEH when he finally decides to admit the truth in what is supposed to be an act of bravery, but instead comes off as a show of how this eighteen-year-old had to wait until the family he's been leeching off of begins to receive death threats before admitting the truth. At the end of this story (a tale so long, convoluted, and dull that you spend half the time on the edge of your seat waiting for the "if you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide..." placard to come on the screen), the audience is led to believe that Dear Evan Hansen has grown from this experience and somehow, after all of this, we are supposed to feel happy for him. 

Before I begin to analyze the insanity that is this plotline, I just need to focus for a minute on how absolutely terrifying Ben Platt looks in this film. To preface this, I have built a brand around hating this man's face. I honestly cannot describe exactly why but there is something so genuinely unbearable about his appearance. Is it false earnesty? Is it those eyes that always look as though they're gazing off into the distance? Is it that his PR team has taken on the impossible feat of trying to pass him off as sexy for the past year? Who knows. However, the makeup department for DEH decided to go in the creative direction of making their lead character somehow look both 5 years old and 50 years old at the same time. I completely understand the decision to cast Ben Platt as Evan Hansen, as he played the character in the original cast of the Broadway show (along with the fact that his father produced the whole thing), however, did they have to make him look so awful? This man looks so fucking wild that there were points within the movie in which I burst out in hysterical laughter because of how absolutely ridiculous he looked. Going off of this, Dear Evan Hansen somehow manages to look even more out of place since they, for some reason, decided to cast age-appropriate-looking actors for literally every other role. Why they couldn't have made everyone else 30 years old is something beyond me. 

Anyways, though I walked into the theatre with the general idea of the plotline, I don't think I ever could have been prepared for how actually sick and depraved what Dear Evan Hansen did was. DEH is a senior in high school, making him 17-18 years old; though he is a teenager, at this age, one has not only an idea of what right and wrong are but also have developed basic empathy. However, watching these events unfold really led me to question all of this. To remind everyone, Connor's parents, the people that Evan cons, have, without warning, lost their child. The Murphey family is grieving and quite vulnerable at this time and this is especially displayed by Amy Adams who is constantly asking Evan to share memories he had with her son, experiences that he then fabricates with alarming amounts of detail. I mean DEH is a little rusty at first but by the climax of the film, boy does this guy know how to manipulate. He comes up with plenty more fake memories, a series of false email chains that he and his friend (token POC gay) meticulously write, lulls a teenage girl into believing her relationship with her now-dead brother was improving, and nearly nabs Connor's college fund in the process. I mean it's just vile. This guy spends nearly the entire film using a dead teenager for his personal, social, romantic and attempted financial gain and we're supposed to believe this can all be solved with an "I'm sorry" video and a hazy backstory of parental abandonment? This behavior is so deeply depraved and manipulative, even the veil of "awkward teenager" cannot hide the sociopathic behavior this man possesses. 

Going off of this, what confused me even further was that after watching two hours of Dear Evan Hansen causing irreparable damage to a grieving family, we were supposed to see him as a relatable character and an actual hero of sorts. Though Evan Hansen may have been struggling with mental illness, I cannot possibly side with him or even want anything remotely good for him and quite frankly think it's disgusting that the audience is clearly urged to see him as a guy who committed a couple mistakes instead of a con artist who preyed on a vulnerable group of people. Though prestige television and edgy novelists have tried to push the anti-hero onto consumers for the past decade, Dear Evan Hansen is nothing but a villain. 

Overall, this horribly scripted, offensive, and just downright boring film is a waste of crying Julianne Moore (a sacred thing) and ultimately fuels my theory that this show was only made to give unconventionally attractive musical theatre boys someone other than Moritz to play.