I Am Not Okay With This: more Big Teen Emotions from the Stranger Things team

If there is one undeniable fact that young adult movies and TV shows have taught us, it is that teenage feelings are extremely powerful. From Carrie massacring a whole prom with telekinesis to Sabrina Spellman’s Big Witch Energy, we must both respect teen emotions and fear them at the same time. That is why middle-aged men mock fans of One Direction and BTS: they’re scared that, if not cowed by embarrassment, the energy could cause some kind of world-ending weather event. Which is why, when Sydney in I Am Not Okay With This (Netflix, from Wednesday 26 February) destroys a whole forest with her mind because she’s really, really horny, it sort of feels … realistic?

Let’s recap. The show follows 16-year-old Syd (Sophia Lillis), who has moved to a boring Pennsylvania town with her mum Maggie and little brother Liam. “I’m not special and I’m OK with that,” she writes in the diary she has been told to keep by the school counsellor, in the wake of her dad killing himself in their basement. Yes, the basement of the house the family still lives in. And, like the old Native American burial ground trope, the basement channels Syd’s teenage rage into Carrie-like powers that levitate objects when she is upset and kill her brother’s pet hedgehog. (RIP, Banana Bigglesworth.)

I Am Not Okay With This is from the producers of Stranger Things and directed by The End of the F***ing World’s Jonathan Entwhistle, and anyone who has seen those shows, or Netflix’s other huge teen hits The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina or Riverdale, will recognise some familiar themes. A protagonist who feels like an outsider, powered by the boiling-hot rage of life’s unfairness (or, in Syd’s case, being asked to walk to the supermarket exactly once by her mum). A manic pixie dream boy; here, Syd’s neighbour Stan (Wyatt Oleff), who is every teenage girl’s ultimate fantasy – a non-threatening weed dealer who drives a vintage car. Extremely stylish teenagers with impossibly good hair. A beautifully shot US town (Brownstone, where Syd moves, is a wash of 70s-style ochres). And a setting in that weird Netflix realm that could be any time in the last half-century (the characters go to 50s-style diners, listen to 80s music, own 90s VHS tapes and have mobile phones).

At first, compared to its rival shows, I Am Not Okay With This feels a bit … low stakes. Syd is not on the run for murder or fighting monsters created by shady corporations – she has discovered that if she gets annoyed at someone, they might have a minor nosebleed. It doesn’t have The End of the F***ing World’s humour, or Stranger Things’s heart. But it soon becomes clear that Syd’s new supernatural powers might be fuelled not by grief but by the raging horn for her best friend, Dina. And that’s where Syd’s EBTM (Extremely Big Teen Emotions) could actually save the show.

Instead of admitting she is gay, Syd goes into denial. Because shoving teenage feelings down under the bubbling lava of anger, horniness, confusion and grief won’t result in them exploding out at the very worst moment like, say, the homecoming dance Syd agrees to go to with Stan, will it? Bring on the pig’s blood and slam the fire exits shut: things are about to get interesting.