Forever Mia

A frantic Mia (KateLynn E. Newberry) stares into a camcorder and makes a vow: she will never stop fighting. Then the movie jumps back to the start to show us how she got here. Mia lives a quiet life—morning workouts, phone calls with her best friend about the new guy she’s dating, and running her plant shop. Across town, Noah (Morgan Middlebrook) sleeps in while a call comes from job number four asking where their project stands. He brushes them off. He’s got a project of his own—cyberstalking his high school ex-girlfriend, Mia, on her shop’s social media page.

Noah walks into Mia’s plant shop, and she immediately remembers the abuse she experienced at his hands long ago. The memories cause her to tremble. The reunion is tense, and she insists that he leave and never come back. Mia’s real boyfriend, Derrick, calls, and the two plan a romantic evening, hoping it ends well (you know). Noah watches their entire date from a distance, and the next morning, he shows up at Derrick’s job to confront him. Ready for their evening rendezvous, Mia can’t reach Derrick on the phone. Then Noah appears in her bedroom uninvited, presses a chloroform-soaked rag over her face, and everything goes dark.

Mia wakes up chained in the living room of a house she’s never seen. It is Noah’s childhood home, half-unpacked, with moving boxes everywhere. He gives her a tour of “their” new home. He’s dreamed of this moment for a very long time. Together, they’ll settle down and maybe someday start a family. Escape is virtually impossible—Noah works from home, so he’s almost never gone. Mia quickly figures out her best move is to play along, and when he steps away, she digs through those moving boxes, finds a camcorder, and continues searching for anything that might get her out.

Mia clings to a post during a tense dinner in Forever Mia.

“A frantic Mia stares into a camcorder and makes a vow: she will never stop fighting.”

Forever Mia proudly stands alongside a long list of obsessive-boyfriend female-survivor tales. Director Katherine Diaz delivers a fresh, well-crafted take on the captive thriller. KateLynn E. Newberry is a highly sympathetic protagonist; you can see Mia’s backstory in her eyes and performance. Morgan Middlebrook is too good as the creepy ex-boyfriend. He’s got love-struck, delusional down pat, shifting back and forth from blissfully content to psychotically paranoid with ease.

The fun of Forever Mia comes from screenwriter David Bohórquez’s script. It’s a solid story that feels plausible right from the start, from how Noah finds Mia to how Mia finally makes her last stand. Noah’s next steps get creepier and creepier as a true thriller should.

Captive stories are always told best by indie filmmakers. The studios want to throw big budgets and big stars at them, which only makes the stories more complicated and ultimately pulls you out of the reality of the situation. Best of all, Forever Mia is a good-looking thriller—almost flawless from a production standpoint. Katherine Diaz’s film is a controlled thriller that stays on track as Mia’s plight slowly runs off the rails.