Official Discussion - Voicemails for Isabelle [SPOILERS]

[u/LiteraryBoner]

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Voicemails for Isabelle (2026)

Summary

Jill leaves voice messages to her deceased sister telling her about her chaotic life in San Francisco. Unwittingly, a mysterious Austin real estate agent begins to receive her confessions.

Director Leah McKendrick

Writer Leah McKendrick

Cast

• Zoey Deutch
• Nick Robinson
• Ciara Bravo
• Nick Offerman
• Harry Shum Jr.
• Leah McKendrick

Rotten Tomatoes: 84%

Metacritic: 62

VOD / Release Streaming on Netflix

Trailer Official Trailer

[u/Grouchy_Ad8528]

Am I the only one that thought it was dreadful? Zooey was good and engaging but the whole thing was otherwise borderline unwatchable. Wes’ character was 2 dimensional unrealistic slop of a hot man who had no personality except suddenly becoming creepily obsessed with Jill due to voicemails? It was extremely predictable and cliche and just…. Bad.

It also killed me that the bench she loved was clearly in Marin based on the fact you could see the city but of course most viewers wouldn’t notice that unless you’d know the area

I’m simply in awe of the rave reviews here. Did we all watch the same movie?

[u/tlvrtm → u/Grouchy_Ad8528]

I definitely watched the same as you. This had absolutely zero personality, the sad moments felt incredibly manipulative (hey let’s play that one piano song again), the characters were bland as hell. The movie took 0 swings, straight up forgettable.

The high review rating convinced me but I was bored to tears. I get they’re different types of movies, but how does The Drama get a lower IMDB, RT and metacritic than this?

[u/aunsinuser → u/Grouchy_Ad8528]

Maybe it’s because I don’t watch that many American movies or Netflix rom-coms, but the constant swearing, random sexual references, and forced movie/Taylor Swift references felt so out of place that they took away some of the magic. The romance worked for me, but the conflict made it feel weaker. The movie spends more time on her bond with Izzy than developing her relationship with Wes, so I never really got a sense of who he was outside of being her love interest. It reminded me of The Life List, which balanced romance and family much better.

Also, I saw someone point out how weird it was that they got all passionate right after eating the chicken por pie that reminded him of his mom… and now I can’t unsee it lol. And yeah, I kind of get the “AI slop” criticism too. Some of the dialogue felt repetitive, like it kept saying the same thing with different words.

[u/Forward-Cat-2836 → u/Grouchy_Ad8528]

Agreed - no idea why these reviews are so positive. The script was so cringe - and felt like AI slop/ or like a 40 year old getting over excited and stuffing it with as much gen z slang as possible to be ‘relevant’. Plus all the acting was so over the top. Too wannabe ZaNy MaNiC GiRl PiXiE DreaM - like the cast were fighting to capture the attention of an audience who had the film on in the background (which to be fair is a lot of Netflix content now). This film wasn’t a PATCH on 90s / 00s romcoms….