'Oh, Hi!" is a black comedy that wears out its welcome

Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman's charms can't overcome a blurry screenplay.

Logan Lerman and Molly Gordon are shackled to an all-over-the-map screenplay in “Oh, Hi!” (Sony Pictures Classics)

There’s no good time to tell someone you’re dating that you’re not interested in a relationship. But surely one of the worst times is when they have you handcuffed to a bed.

That’s the intriguing, slightly kinky premise of writer-director Sophie Brooks’ “Oh, Hi!” Unfortunately, in its attempt to be a rom-com, a black comedy and a bit of a “Misery”-like thriller, the movie is as ill-defined as its central relationship.

Things seem to be going great for Iris (Molly Gordon) and Isaac (Logan Lerman). They’ve been dating for four months, and on a road trip up to an AirBnB on their first weekend trip together, they seem to be having a great time, laughing and joking and canoodling. Lerman and Gordon are enormously appealing together, and their chemistry on-screen doesn’t feel forced.

“Oh, Hi!” references an inside joke they have on the name Ojai, which seems like a strange, extraneous thing to name your movie after. Unless Brooks is suggesting that the “deep connection” Iris thinks she has with Isaac is really just a shared language of in-jokes.

After a night of great sex where Isaac ends up handcuffed to the bed, he drops the bomb; actually, he’s not really interested in a relationship. In fact, he’s been dating other people this whole time. We’re as confused as Iris is about this sudden change of heart, and while she processes this new development, Iris leaves Isaac confined to the bed. For hours and hours.

This is where “Oh, Hi!” needs to execute a very difficult turn, going from being a sweet rom-com into something darker. But how dark should it get? Brooks can’t seem to decide.

At times, Iris seems like a mix of Kathy Bates in “Misery” and Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction,” becoming visibly unhinged as she desperately tries to convince Isaac that they should be together, as he struggles against his bonds. But then she snaps back to normal, mystified and a little embarrassed that she’s holding this guy hostage. And then the process repeats. Meanwhile, Lerman is charming as Isaac, but he’s just charming. Like Iris, we never get a sense of who he is or what he wants behind that good-guy grin, other than to get free of Iris.

The actors are game to handle everything the screenplay throws at them, but because the audience can’t get a hold of who these two characters are, it’s hard to feel emotionally invested in what’s happening. It’s also hard to feel any suspense about how this all might turn out.

And, honestly, it’s hard to find much of it very funny, although the film is enlivened greatly when Iris’ two friends (Geraldine Viswanathan and John Reynolds) show up to try and help her out of her predicament. Reynolds, a Madison West grad, is particularly funny underplaying the situation, treating a hostage situation as calmly as if trying to diagnose why a laptop isn’t working properly.

By the time Iris is considering witchcraft as a possible answer to her problems, “Oh, Hi!” has worn out its welcome with the viewer. It’s too bad. They’re nice kids, and I was rooting for them to work things out.

“Oh, Hi!” opens in theaters on Friday. In Madison, it will play at AMC Fitchburg 18.