Zola: A24's Aesthetic Version of a Viral 2015 Twitter Thread

A24 has brought Zola's Twitter thread to the big screen. Zola's trip to Florida began as a dark comedy and led to disturbing incidents. It has all the ingredients that an A24 film would have, aesthetic cinematography, authentic story, top-notch cast, and entirely thrilling.

Zola (2021)
Genres: Dark Comedy, Drama
Cast: Taylour Paige, Riley Keough

Zola A24 Film Aesthetic Poster
Image: A24 studio

A'Ziah "Zola" King (Taylour Paige) is a Detroit waitress who is also a part-time nightclub dancer. While she was serving at Hooters, she met a white girl. Yes, the white girl was Stefani Jezowski (Riley Keough). Stefani seemed like an affable girl. (Or perhaps she was looking for a girl to take to Florida.)
Then these fresh friends went to the club to dance. Stefani had gained enough trust to take Zola to Florida the next day.

Y'all wanna see the first 5 minutes of Zola?

Zola, Stefani, Derrek (Stefani's naive boyfriend, played by Nicholas Braun), and ruthless black guy "X" a.k.a. Abegunde Olawale (played by Colman Domingo) went on the road trip to make money from club dancing.

It's all fun and dance until Abegunde Olawale starts threatening Zola. He was desperate for money and would do anything for it. Here begins the series of unsettling events!

In Zola's Twitter thread (@_zolarmoon)
Stefani is Jessica 
Derrek is Jarrett
Abegunde Olawale, the pimp is "Z"

I felt bad for Derrek, Stefani was using him as a puppet. And "X", on the other hand, was using Stefani as a puppet. Stefani's character is frivolous and subservient to "X". But Zola is incisive. 

Zola is limited to those 148 tweets. It is directed from Zola's point of viewIt's hard to tell "who is who" in the internet world. We didn't get the depth of characters due to their privacy or limited source. The story is the same as in the Twitter thread, nothing more, nothing less. The film doesn't cover the consequences of their Florida trip, which Zola tweeted at the end of the thread.

The duo of Taylour Paige & Riley Keough gave an alluring performance. The cast resembles the actual characters. Zola's tweets are adequately embedded in the script. A24's filming style is always eye-catching. It's not one of those A24's classic films, yet it's worth watching.


Zola official trailer

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