In 2026, the Colleen Hoover Industrial Complicated is alive, properly, and rising at an exponential price. Since 2012, the creator has printed 26 works of various size, changing into a BookTok sensation alongside the best way. It took Hollywood a while to catch up, however previously few years, they lastly determined to faucet in. It Ends With Us was launched in 2024, kicking off the continued authorized battle between Blake Energetic and Justin Baldoni together with making $350 million in opposition to a $25 million manufacturing finances.
2025’s Regretting You made a way more modest $90 million, however confirmed shocking legs on the field workplace. Hoover, who serves as a producer on all of those initiatives, stepped in to co-write the newest adaptation of her work, Reminders of Him, primarily based on her 2022 novel of the identical title. Just like the movies that precede it, it is a somber affair, following Kenna (Maika Monroe), a lady just lately launched from jail who’s hoping to reconnect with the daughter she had whereas behind bars.
Sadly, Reminders of Him is not an excellent movie, no less than within the conventional sense. However, like Regretting You, there is a sure degree of lizard mind enjoyment that transcends a lot of the movie’s flaws and permits for all of the soapy, melodramatic parts to be loved at their very own degree. You sense this instantly when the movie begins with Kenna’s journey again to her hometown of Laramie, Wyoming, a taxi inexplicably in the midst of the huge wilderness.
Earlier than making it to city, although, Kenna asks the driving force to drag over so she will kick down a freeway memorial devoted to a person named Scotty Landry. See, Kenna is in jail for vehicular manslaughter, having unintentionally killed her boyfriend Scotty (the exact same) on his birthday. Scotty’s dad and mom, Grace (Lauren Graham) and Patrick (Bradley Whitford), now have custody of their son’s daughter and are not fast to forgive the girl they blame for ruining their life, who now resides in a dilapidated motel-turned-apartment complicated named Paradise.
It is fairly the feat of storytelling; all of that is conveyed throughout the first 30 or so minutes of the film, and with roughly an hour and a half left, this story can solely go a number of locations. So, in fact, Kenna should fall in love with one of the best buddy of her useless boyfriend, Ledger (Tyriq Withers), a former soccer participant who now owns a bar that sits in the identical storefront as Kenna and Scotty’s outdated favourite bookstore. Little thrives like this are peppered all through Reminders of Him, meant to really feel like strokes of destiny in some grander love story. There are just a few deadly flaws that undermine this drive towards future.
Reminders Of Him Is Quintessential Colleen Hoover – For Higher & Worse
Director Vanessa Caswill, who helmed the BBC’s 2017 adaptation of Little Girls, is aware of the right way to shoot the fantastic thing about Wyoming, although Reminders of Him in some way has the identical sheen as earlier Hoover variations regardless of every having somebody totally different behind the digicam. This one no less than has the huge panorama to indicate off, mountain vistas changing the town streets of Boston in It Ends With Us, giving the movie a way of place that it could in any other case lack.
Reminders of Him‘s greatest asset, although, is Monroe. Considered one of our most underrated scream queens, Monroe is aware of the right way to emote, and the position of Kenna requires plenty of that. She wears her ache overtly, continually writing letters to Scotty in a beat-up composition pocket book she carries in every single place. Typically, by way of voiceover, Kenna reads these letters aloud, an unlucky narrative gadget that Monroe tries to imbue with a way of gravitas the writing in any other case lacks. It would not assist that almost all Reminders of Him‘s plot is laid naked within the trailers, however even when it hadn’t been, it could be largely predictable.
Meant to be driving all of that is the simple chemistry between Kenna and Ledger, however Monroe and Withers merely haven’t got it. Withers’ character is not afforded all that a lot dimension. There are hints at a backstory, however he is extra plot gadget than absolutely fleshed out human being, which makes it troublesome to see what Kenna sees in him, apart from the truth that he is been there for her daughter.
But in some way, a way, none of this makes Reminders of Him unwatchable, and even unenjoyable. The viewers was fairly reactive to numerous moments, and chances are you’ll discover it laborious to not get swept up within the emotion, or in some moments that clearly aren’t deliberately humorous, however comprise a kernel of humor nonetheless.
There is a motive Hoover’s works are so profitable, and we could also be parsing by way of the pages for years looking for it. Nevertheless it’s beginning to appear as if this steadiness between absurdity and anguish is what makes movies like Reminders of Him inherently watchable. It should not work and, on many ranges, it would not, however the ultimate bundle is one thing that’s entertaining within the purest sense: a nonsensical fantasy wrapped up in a harrowing romance.
Reminders of Him hits theaters on March 13.
- Launch Date
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March 5, 2026
- Runtime
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114 minutes
- Director
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Vanessa Caswill
- Writers
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Lauren Levine, Colleen Hoover
- Producers
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Gina Matthews, Colleen Hoover, Lauren Levine