Zola

Arguably the best film adapted from a Twitter thread (so far), Zola also earns the spot of the A24iest of A24 films that the revered indie studio has thus far released.

An amalgam of Waves, Spring Breakers, The Florida Project, and American Honey, co-writer/director Janicza Bravo’s mostly faithful telling of the viral 148 tweets penned by Detroit waitress A'Ziah "Zola" King in October 2015 is a sharp cautionary tale, full of double-take entertainment — much of it horrifying yet wholly believable.

Despite the film’s well-known, fact-based roots and Zola (Taylour Paige, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom) noting from the start that the tale is about how her and Stefani (a cartoonish yet authentically trashy Riley Keough) “fell out,” plentiful surprises remain as our heroine accepts an offer from this overly friendly woman she barely knows to road trip to Tampa and strip for big bucks.

Throughout Zola, Paige excels at suffering ridiculous and increasingly shady behavior from Stefani, her comically naive boyfriend Derrek (Nicholas Braun, Succession), and the usually kind and sweet Colman Domingo, who gets to flex some impressive villain muscle as Stefani’s “roommate” — a nominee for Euphemism of the Year.

The series of outrageous twists and turns while Zola desperately searches for an escape route are tightly constructed by debut screenwriter Jeremy O. Harris and Bravo. A veteran TV director with one feature (Lemon) to her name, Bravo guides the cast and crew with confidence, yielding strong performances from the core four players — plus Jason Mitchell (Straight Outta Compton) in a scene-stealing role — and just enough visual flair to show that she gives a damn.

But then, as indie features from new-ish filmmakers often do, Zola suddenly ends with far too many questions — all of which and more are answered in the source material — left dangling. Since it’s doubtfully a Sunset Boulevard situation, perhaps viewers are supposed to infer that Zola got home safely from the simple fact that she’s able to tell the story, but after the wild and thrilling buildup, the abrupt stop cheapens everyone’s hard work and hampers the film from potential greatness.

Grade: B-plus. Rated R. Now playing at Carolina Cinemark

(Photo: A24)