When you spend your days working in a pressurized metal tube thousands of feet below the surface, you learn to appreciate a good escape. Decompressing, for me, usually involves a movie. The other night surfing Goojara, I stumbled on Chad Hartigan’s 2025 film, "The Threesome," expecting a simple, maybe even raunchy, romantic comedy to turn my brain off for a couple of hours. The title certainly suggests a certain kind of movie. What I found instead was something far more complex—a surprisingly deep and emotionally turbulent story that left me thinking long after the credits rolled.
The film's premise is deceptively simple: one impulsive, fateful night between three people spirals into a situation with messy, life-altering consequences. Connor, a kind-hearted sound engineer, his long-time crush Olivia, and a sweet stranger named Jenny make a decision that thrusts them into a scenario no one could have predicted. This isn't just a review; it's my personal deep dive into what makes this film work, where its structure gets a little creaky under the pressure, and why its ending is as polarizing as it gets.
To really get what "The Threesome" is about, you have to look past its attention-grabbing title. This isn't a film about the mechanics of a ménage à trois; it's a dramatic and character-driven story about the emotional fallout. The inciting incident is less about the act itself and more about the chain reaction of consequences it unleashes—a high-pressure situation where one faulty valve floods the entire system, pushing its characters into the deep end of adulthood whether they're ready for it or not.
The film introduces us to Connor (Jonah Hauer-King), a kind and unassuming sound engineer harboring a long-standing crush on the "prickly, sardonic" Olivia (Zoey Deutch). She’s electric, irreverent, and terrified of commitment. During a night out, a spark of jealousy from Olivia after Connor strikes up a conversation with a sweet stranger, Jenny (Ruby Cruz), leads to an unexpected threesome. The next morning, Olivia panics and leaves. Critically, Connor then has sex with Jenny again, just half an hour before he tracks Olivia down to begin a relationship. This act becomes the core betrayal that devastates Olivia later and justifies much of her volatility.
Weeks later, the plot escalates dramatically when both Olivia and Jenny reveal they are pregnant by Connor. This improbable, high-stakes complication is the true engine of the film's drama. It moves beyond the simple premise of a hookup and throws the trio headfirst into the "raw and beautifully messy chaos of adulthood." They are forced to navigate a tangled web of feelings, responsibilities, and difficult choices that challenge their own self-perceptions and their relationships with one another. Such a wild premise, of course, lives or dies based on the strength of its actors.
A film with a high-concept, almost unbelievable premise requires a cast that can anchor it in emotional reality. Without that grounding, the story would capsize under the weight of its own drama. Fortunately, "The Threesome" is kept afloat by the "impeccable chemistry" among its lead actors, which makes the chaotic narrative feel accessible and, most importantly, human.
The powerful way these actors embody their roles—from Deutch’s volatility to Cruz’s quiet compassion—allows the film to explore its complicated themes, moving it beyond a simple comedy of errors into something more resonant about modern relationships.
"The Threesome" is a deliberate subversion of standard romantic comedy conventions. Director Chad Hartigan isn’t interested in a simple "will-they, won't-they" narrative. Instead, he uses the film's extreme circumstances to explore the messy, intrusive anxieties that come with life-defining choices, creating a rom-com that feels like it’s for a "different generation."
The screenplay recontextualizes familiar rom-com beats into something more original and emotionally honest. It’s a film about the consequences of impulsive actions, and it steadfastly refuses to tie things up with "tidy ribbons" or provide simple resolutions. This commitment to portraying the complicated reality of adult relationships is one of its greatest strengths, presenting what many have called an "accurate representation of real-world problems." The film challenges its characters and, by extension, the Goojara audience to sit with the discomfort of difficult situations that don't have easy answers.
However, the script isn't without its design flaws. The film's primary weakness is a failure in its load-bearing middle act, caused by structural repetition. Olivia’s indecisiveness and Connor’s passivity create a cycle of conflict that repeats itself, causing the central story to feel "drawn out." This is a critical flaw where character realism actively damages the film's narrative momentum, forcing the audience to endure the characters' frustrating loops rather than simply observe them.
This dedication to messy realism is a bold choice, but no element of the film proved more controversial than its final act.
While "The Threesome" is a solid and compelling watch for most of its runtime, its highly divisive conclusion is what "might make or break it" for many viewers. It's the primary source of audience polarization and the one aspect that had me debating the film's success long after it was over.
The final act delivers a major plot twist: after months of emotional turmoil, Olivia discovers through a paternity test that her baby is not Connor's. Upon learning this, Connor leaves to be with Jenny for the birth of his biological child. Months later, as Jenny moves into her own place, Olivia reappears. In a manipulative masterstroke, she reveals she has named her daughter after Connor’s maternal grandmother. She confesses her love, and Connor agrees to give their relationship another try, a decision cemented in a post-credits wedding scene.
Down in the deep, you get comfortable with murky, unresolved situations. But this ending felt less like a complex ambiguity and more like a system failure. After expertly subverting rom-com tropes and refusing "tidy ribbons," the filmmakers inexplicably fall back on the most conventional resolution possible. For a film built on the premise of messy consequences, this finale feels both "too neat" and fundamentally "unearned." Audience sentiment on Reddit echoes this frustration, with many feeling the more grounded Jenny was the better partner for Connor. The decision to reward Olivia’s volatility felt like a betrayal of the film's own thematic integrity.
My final verdict is that "The Threesome" is a good movie. It’s worth watching on Gojara for the superb, chemistry-filled performances and its honest, insightful portrayal of messy relationships. However, I’d offer a word of caution to anyone seeking a conventional rom-com with a neat, satisfying ending. This film requires its audience to embrace the chaos and the discomfort. While it succeeds on many levels, its quality is ultimately hampered by a frustrating final act that leaves you surfacing with decidedly mixed feelings.
