Cat Person, the film based on the viral New Yorker short story, is going to bring the discourse; but amongst the incoming noise and buzz, what struck me most about the film was how it made me feel. It captured the daily horror films women run through in their minds- as we walk home from work, go on a first date, or let someone new into our lives. Was this adaption a hit? No, probably more of a miss. Did it leave me reeling and thinking about it for days afterwards? Absolutely.
First, let me take you back to 2017 when Cat Person was first published in The New Yorker. The short story by Kristen Roupenian, went viral. Viral is an overused adage now in 2023, but this really did break the internet. At the time, I was flying to Delhi, India, and almost every woman I passed at the airport was glued to their phone, reading it. It dominated conversations for months, and got swept up in the #MeToo movement. Cat Person, the short story, was about a college student’s [Margo] unsettling fling with an older man [Robert]; it was a story about power dynamics, age gaps, consent, and guilt. It struck a chord with young women everywhere.
Roupenian went on to receive a million-dollar advance from her publisher Scout Press for a collection of stories, You Know You Want This, which was published in 2019. It did not capture the zeitgeist in the same way.
In 2021, the Cat Person hysteria was once more ignited. This time round, though, it was more about ethics and alleged plagiarism. Alexis Nowicki wrote an expose for Slate, alleging that Roupenian had drawn on specific details from her life and packaged them up as her own. It was like the 2021-real-life-version of 2023’s bestselling book Yellowface. Nowicki wrote “Some of the most pivotal scenes—the sexual encounter and the hostile text messages—were unfamiliar to me. But the similarities to my own life were eerie: The protagonist was a girl from my small hometown who lived in the dorms at my college and worked at the art house theater where I’d worked and dated a man in his 30s, as I had. I recognised the man in the story, too. His appearance (tall, slightly overweight, with a tattoo on his shoulder). His attire (rabbit fur hat, vintage coat). His home (fairy lights over the porch, a large board game collection, framed posters). It was a vivid description of Charles. But that felt impossible. Could it be a wild coincidence? Or did Roupenian, a person I’d never met, somehow know about me?”
So, it’s not surprising that Cat Person is now a feature film. What is surprising, however, is the direction it went in. Directed by The Spy Who Dumped Me’s Susanna Fogel, this adaptation stays truthful to the original material in the first half. In the second, it goes awol- from nuanced, tiny horrors into an actual horror film. It’s a direction no one saw coming, and one which is only partly successful.
Starring Succession’s Nicholas Braun as Robert and Emilia Jones as Margot, Cat Person is brilliantly acted, and the scene setting is exceptional. There’s a scene where Margot is walking home from working at the Cinema, and after spotting Robert hanging around outside earlier in the evening, she is scared of being followed. Every element is visceral and relatable; how Margot blasts Britney Spears out of her headphones, her panic when her phone dies, the jumping at any sounds, the anxiety. All women have been in this situation multiple times: walking home, alone, in the dark, fearful that the worst will happen.
A lot of reviews for Cat Person, thus far, have panned it with one or two stars. Noticeably, the worst reviews have come from male writers. This, I think, is because fundamentally the film is based on fears women feel and the gendered nature of violence against women. Don’t get me wrong, Cat Person will not win any awards and I’m not sure I can wholeheartedly say it’s a film I enjoyed, but I do recommend watching it. Contradictory, I know.
What it does well and powerfully is show the escalation that women are scared of when they get in situations like Margot’s. Margaret Atwood explained it best (in a quote the film opened with): “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” How rejection can turn violent, how saying no often isn’t accepted, how being slut-shamed can get more and more cruel. The film follows the short story to its end, where Margot gets the text “whore” from Robert. Up until this point, it is illustrating all the calculations women go through to avoid being hurt- letting a man down gently, saying yes when you want to say no. Then, it departs from the story and shows what can and does happen to women all the time: where our fears become reality and misogyny becomes violent.
Cat Person is clunky with how it does this, and goes into cheesy thriller mode. It’s effective though, and for days afterwards I was thinking about the Roberts of the world I’ve dated- and how it always felt like I was one step away from being in life-threatening danger. It turns the ‘what if’ into reality, and shows how the version in our heads too often comes true.
It also succeeds in making us cringe, especially at Robert. In the first half, it contrasts the horrors happening in Margot’s head with the uncomfortable realities with Robert. For instance, the most disgusting kiss I have ever seen on screen. Truly truly rotten, hands-covering-my-eyes stuff.
However, the short story’s magic was in its nuance. In its mundanity. Powerful in how normal these interactions are for women, and how many men reading it didn’t see the anything wrong with the relationship. It created conversation and made people think; the film serves up what we should be thinking on a gory platter, and in doing so, loses its appeal.
On my walk home from watching Cat Person, a man crossed the street and started speaking to me. It was 11PM, I was alone, and it was dark. I went into a local shop and waited for him to walk ahead, then I put my airpods back in and played Britney Spears’ best hits on full volume.
Cat Person is showing in UK cinemas from 27 October 2023.
For more from GLAMOUR’s Contributing Editor, Chloe Laws, follow her @chloegracelaws.