Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Zola’ on VOD, in Which a Lascivious Twitter Tale Becomes a Kind Of Wild Cinematic Art

Now making the VOD rounds after a brief theatrical run, Zola is a different kind of BOATS movie — Based On A Twitter Story, which doesn’t make it exactly a true story, but maybe mostly, or at least partly one. In 2015, Detroiter Aziah “Zola” Wells posted a wild and simultaneously hilarious and terrifying string of 148 tweets detailing a road trip to Florida that took more than a couple harrowing turns. It caught fire, and soon enough, Wells was helping director Janicza Bravo (Lemon) hammer her highly cinematic saga into a screenplay, doing their best to stay true to the heart and tone of Wells’ tweetstorm. And the result may be unlike no other movie.

ZOLA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Zola (Taylour Paige) works at a restaurant where the waitresses wear low-cut, high-hem cowgirl dresses. One day this crazee blonde named Stefani (Riley Keough) comes in and compliments Zola on her “perfect titties.” She says they’re like little apples in there. Turns out, they both work stripper poles at local gentlemen’s clubs, and they become fast friends, hanging out and following each other’s socials. Zola’s infatuation clouds her judgment a little maybe, because she agrees to hop in a truck with Stefani and her boyfriend and their roommate, destination Florida, where they hope to make a few Gs in some high-roller clubs. “Ho trips,” Zola calls them, and her boyfriend seems a little uneasy, but she schtups him and all’s well with that, mostly.

Derrek (Nicholas Braun) is Stefani’s boyfriend, and he looks like Scoob’s BFF Shaggy if he was from Detroit. The “roommate” (Colman Domingo) drives a Mercedes SUV and wears fancy shoes and, in voiceover, Zola points out that it’ll be 48 hours before we even know his name. That’s what you call foreshadowing, but at this point, we know what they don’t, which is what you call dramatic irony, and they’re just having a good time, singing along to the radio and being goofy during the all-night drive down south. There’s a point where Stefani and Derrek are going off about a dirty stripper they know who makes the pole all grimy or something, and Derrek keeps yelling CLEAN YA BUTT, CLEAN YA BUTT, and they rollin’, and Zola has this what-have-I-gotten-myself-into look on her face, and she just mutters, “Word” and looks a little put off, but if that’s as bad as this gets, then no biggie.

They cruise past gigantic roadside Christian crosses and Confederate flags, which loom like warning signs of impending doom, and guess what, that wasn’t as bad as it got, and it had nothing to do with such “local flavor.” The “roommate” pulls up to the Bedbug Inn so they can ditch Derrek, then he schleps the ladies to a scuzzdump where the strippers pray emphatically to God for well-endowed men to stop by their fine establishment. As Zola and Stefani get ready, Omniscient Zola butts in and narrates, “From here on out, watch every move this bitch make.”

The crowd at this joint is a bunch of hicks and the money’s lame, so the “roommate,” who you will not at all be surprised to learn is actually Stefani’s pimp, takes them to a fancy hotel. Zola puts her foot down — as the movie photographs her, she’s an artist, an athlete, and she’s not about to take money for sex. Stefani, though, well, that’s why we’re watching her every move. Soon enough there’s a knock on their door and it’s a scary-looking man, and Stefani begins servicing him, or, as Zola voiceover-deadpans, “They start f—in’, it was gross.” The guy only gives her 150 bucks, which further horrifies Zola. If Stefani is gonna do this, she better do it right, so Zola puts up a backpage ad on the internet and Stefani spends the rest of the wee hours charging Florida Men and their very, very ugly wangs 500 bucks for 15 minutes. And yes, what you’re thinking now is absolutely right, that this is going to get much worse before it gets any better.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Hustlers, schmustlers. Zola takes some of the undie-grungy sleaze of Spring Breakers and Boogie Nights and runs it through the modern filters of social media.

Performance Worth Watching: Paige stands in as the relative — highly relative — moral center of the story, so her performance tends to be understated. Braun is terrific as the bewildered schlub boyfriend forced into moments of raw authenticity. Domingo is by turns frightening and funny as the borderline-sociopathic pimp (who makes all manner of weird grunting sounds when he pees). But Keough is the standout, rendering Stefani the hottest of messes, pathetic and sympathetic, a caricature made slightly more multi-dimensional by moments of desperation, a character so sad she’s funny, so funny she’s sad. She draws out her vowels, turning “That’s too much” into “That’s too muuuuyeech,” and it’s not too much, it’s just right, and exquisitely funny.

Memorable Dialogue: “We savages, miss,” says one of Stefani’s customers, and the rest of his group chimes in all together like a cult: “WE AIN’T PROPER.”

Sex and Skin: Lots of it, and it’s all yucky. Zola says it more than once, so let’s reiterate: “They start f—in’, it was gross.”

Our Take: Zola has been prefaced by a fair amount of hyperbole of the type that defines the language of social media — you know, OMG it’s the craziest shit EVARR. Truthfully, the movie is more subtle than that, while adhering to the slangy timbre of Wells’ original telling. One expects dramatic amplification from a story involving prostitution and pimps and bangers and guns and unwitting participants in such illicit yuckiness, and Bravo seems unwilling to indulge that, perhaps in defiance of conventional narrative, or to upend our expectations a bit.

The story as we see it in Zola may not be wholly true, but it doesn’t adhere to any typical dramatic arcs — the beginning may be the ending of something, and the end may be the beginning of something, and in between, there are some rowdy and ugly episodes that are quite funny, but on the other hand, may not be funny at all. I feel the need to play apologist for the film, which is distinctive in its tone, visual style and Mica Levi’s evocative score. It almost stubbornly refuses to wallow in its own outrageousness, lest it further perpetuate stereotypes about sex work, or undermine its statements on misogyny and the realities of sex trafficking, its sharp little stabs at racism, classism and religious hypocrisy. Maybe it’s frustrating that the movie doesn’t seem to live up to its potential to run us through the ringer, but its lack of that level of contrivance is also refreshing, feeling more true-to-life, less eager to please. As they say, you’ll laugh and you’ll cry.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Zola is immediately wild and crazy and entertaining, but it also lingers long afterward.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to stream Zola