Imagine learning in one horrifying moment that your husband and sister were having a long-term affair, that both have died in the same car accident, and that your nephew’s paternity may never be known.
That premise alone screams operatic heartbreak. Yet Regretting You, the latest collaboration between filmmaker Josh Boone and author Colleen Hoover, feels strangely numb. What could have been a raw and emotional dissection of loss becomes a slow-moving film that observes tragedy from behind glass.
Boone directs from a script by Susan McMartin, adapting Hoover’s bestselling novel into something as emotionally flat as a television drama stretched to feature length. At its center is Morgan (Allison Williams), a mother balancing grief, betrayal, and guilt alongside her teenage daughter, Clara (McKenna Grace).
When a car crash takes both Morgan’s husband, Chris (Scott Eastwood), and her sister, Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald), the film reveals an unfolding chain of family deceit. But the sharpness of that revelation never cuts deep. Instead, the story drifts like a cloud that never quite rains.
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The film’s structure toggles between past and present; 2007 teenage nostalgia collides with the dull ache of adulthood in 2024, but the emotional transitions are as stiff as their time jumps. The younger versions of Morgan and Jonah (Dave Franco) circle unfulfilled attraction; the older ones hover in guilt and confusion.
It should be messy, chaotic, and painfully human. Instead, Boone and McMartin render grief like an instruction manual, precise but sterile.
The Problem With Polite Heartbreak
Regretting You belongs to that strain of young adult melodrama that thrives on big emotions and moral reckonings. However, where The Fault in Our Stars (also by Boone) thrived on passion and grounded pain, this film barely feels alive.
The emotions are too tidy, the confrontations too polite. Even when the film dances around uncomfortable truths, it refuses to let its characters fall apart the way real people do.
Allison Williams struggles against the production’s restraint. Her Morgan carries enormous narrative weight, grieving not only her husband’s death but also the betrayal that followed.
Yet her face never fully communicates the density of that pain. She moves through grief like someone rehearsing sadness rather than feeling it. Even when confronting Jonah, the man who silently loved her for decades and is now reeling from the same loss, there’s no heat in their exchanges.
Dave Franco’s Jonah fares even worse. He spends most of the film whispering through scenes, lip-biting, and staring at the floor as if every emotion must stay half-swallowed.
His chemistry with Williams is virtually nonexistent; their grief scenes feel choreographed instead of cathartic. The supposed tension of unresolved love shrinks into awkward small talk.
The only heartbeat comes from McKenna Grace’s performance as Clara. She portrays adolescence with both defiance and tenderness, grounding the film with genuine emotion. Clara’s disbelief, anger, and slow realization of the truth about her family give the story its only sense of momentum.
Her scenes, especially the ones wrestling with teenage dreams and emotional distrust, offer fleeting glimpses of sincerity. Grace understands the story better than the film does; she finds what it means to be young and surrounded by adult hypocrisy.
The Weight of Regret Misused
Colleen Hoover’s writing has always thrived on heightened emotion, grief, love, and the ache of forgiveness wrapped in big moral gestures.
Translating that to film requires a nuanced touch: too restrained and you lose emotional urgency; too exaggerated and it turns syrupy. Boone’s adaptation lands squarely in the first problem: it refuses to feel.
For a story about devastating loss, Regretting You looks strangely calm. The visual tone feels overly polished, with bright lighting even in scenes meant to express despair.
Boone’s filmmaking flattens every tragedy into visual monotony. The camera rarely lingers long enough on faces to reveal conflict, instead cutting away before emotion can register.
Even more puzzling is the film’s reliance on text messages as storytelling devices. Animated bubbles pop up constantly, while voiceovers read their contents aloud as if to double-insure the audience’s understanding.
But rather than deepening intimacy, these moments emphasize distance. No amount of bubble animation can make us feel the connection these characters lack.
The relationship between Clara and her classmate Miller (Mason Thames) could have balanced the heavy adult tension, but it instead mirrors the film’s general blandness.
Their romance feels perfunctory, a collection of small talk and moviegoing dates (at AMC, prominently featured in what looks suspiciously like product placement). Instead of reflecting healing, their bond reinforces how mechanical the storytelling becomes when sincerity is replaced with advertisement polish.
As for symbolism, Boone and McMartin play it safe. Nearly every emotional beat is accompanied by a song or a monologue that spells out feelings the actors haven’t been allowed to display.
There’s never a moment where silence speaks; the dialogue fills every space, even the ones better left aching. By sanding down the raw edges of Hoover’s story, the filmmakers betray its essence.
When Emotion Becomes an Afterthought
The tragedy of Regretting You isn’t just its plot; it’s the missed opportunity within its premise.
Beneath the melodrama lies a story ripe for tenderness and rage: generational guilt, broken trust, and the shared burden of secrets between parent and child. But the film handles these themes with such excessive caution that its emotional potential evaporates.
Boone’s direction suggests fear of sentimentality, as though breaking composure might break the film itself. Scenes that should vibrate with pain, like the moment Morgan learns her husband’s affair was with her own sister, feel almost procedural.
Even Clara’s discovery of the truth lands without the gut-punch it deserves. Instead of chaos, we get calm confrontation; instead of devastation, a shrug.
The pacing worsens this detachment. The middle stretch feels like a waiting room for an emotional reaction that never arrives.
Conversation replaces confrontation. By the time forgiveness surfaces, it feels mechanical rather than earned. The title itself, Regretting You, promises introspection, but the film never gives us regret’s raw form, only its theory.
Still, McKenna Grace prevents complete collapse. Her energy, humor, and flashes of honesty carry a pulse through the monotony. In a film where adults exchange glances instead of feelings, she makes confusion look alive.
Watching her makes one imagine what a more daring version of this story could have been, one that let its characters cry, break, and claw their way toward forgiveness.
When Tragedy Needs Truth
Regretting You end as it began: quiet, awkward, and emotionally restrained. Morgan and Jonah’s attempts at closure feel rehearsed rather than lived. The script gestures toward the inevitability of regret but never earns it. What remains is a film that feels too careful for its own story.
There are traces of what could have been a study in grief, loss, and misplaced trust, but Boone’s direction suffocates the very feeling it seeks to capture. Between too-smooth lighting, surface-level dialogue, and dull performances from its adult leads, the movie forgets that regret is a visceral experience, not a decorative theme.
A talented young actress like McKenna Grace deserves better; so does Hoover’s material. Somewhere inside this lifeless adaptation lies a story aching to be heard: that grief is messy, that love’s collapse deserves noise, and that forgiveness isn’t found in neat dialogue but in the chaos of heartbreak.
Until someone makes that version, Regretting You will remain true to its title; you’ll probably regret watching it.
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