'Misty Green' Review
Release Date: 11/09/26 [VOD]
Genre: Drama.
MPAA: Rated R.
Distributor: A24.
The Verdict: A Must-See
Misty Green has an Emmy and an L.A. penthouse with an ocean view. Trouble is, she’s out of work, the apartment belongs to a dead guy, and his widow has just given her one week to get her shit and get out.
She’s talented, fiercely independent, and a total mess: a party girl whose stubborn streak and bad attitude keep getting her fired. She has seven days to find somewhere to live, salvage a career, and stop sabotaging herself. A few things might finally fall her way — the question is whether she’ll let them.
Writer, director and co-star Chris Rock has had an uneven run behind the camera, from the great Top Five to the forgettable Head of State and I Think I Love My Wife. Here, an extended penthouse opening evokes The Studio: smart, referential, cheeky and crawling with famous people. Rock clearly called in some favors.
But this is Rosalind Eleazar’s movie. She gives an absolute clinic as Misty: commanding, magnetic, desperately sad; she’s a tornado of talent and bad decisions. The hardest part of watching her is that she just Can’t. Stop. Fucking. Up. Eleazar makes every setback hurt, even when Misty practically sends it an engraved invitation.
Rock smartly builds the film around her. Anna Kendrick brings dependable charm to Misty’s underdrawn best friend, Naomi. Daniel Kaluuya gives her brother, Jay, who has bipolar disorder, crushing gravity in limited screen time. Adam Driver supplies the sleaze as her friend Zach, while Topher Grace’s agent, Randy, runs at about 10 percent sleazy — practically a humanitarian by Hollywood standards.
This is the kind of adult, mid-budget, character-driven movie whose disappearance inspires endless think pieces in an age when Marvel movies and YouTube horror rule the box office. But Rock understands the beat here, giving Eleazar room to be funny, difficult and vulnerable without sanding down the contradictions. Race, class, and the terrible machine of fame run through the film without turning it into a lecture.
Then, in the last third, the comedy bottoms out and it gets a little hard to watch.
“You’re always acting!” Rock’s character screams at Misty outside a hospital after a car crash, her system full of booze and drugs. It’s the kind of confrontation that ought to announce a redemption arc. But Misty Green has little interest in making recovery that convenient.
Instead, its Hollywood fairy tale curdles into something harsher. The city that sells reinvention is perfectly happy to swallow people whole. Misty’s talent can get her through a door, but it can’t get her through the day.
The shift is jarring, and Rock’s purpose becomes harder to pin down as the misery ramps up. Is it industry satire? A brutal survival story? A warning to the next generation to stay the hell away? The film makes us feel plenty, even when it's less clear what to do with those feelings.
Still, Eleazar is gutsy, enormous and vivid enough to keep Misty from becoming merely a cautionary tale. Whatever you make of the movie’s bruising final stretch, one thing is hard to dispute: She’s goddamned incredible.
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