XOXO (2016)

XOXO arrived on Netflix in August of 2016 with a modest brief: six strangers, one feverish night, an electronic dance festival, and the collisions of romance and ambition that such settings reliably produce. Christopher Louie directs from a screenplay by Dylan Meyer, and the picture was shot across three real festivals, a production decision that lends the crowd scenes an authenticity the plotting does not always earn. It is a small film about young people chasing a break, and it knows exactly what it is.

The cultural inventory here is real but restrained. Hayley Kiyoko appears as Shanni, and her romance with Krystal, played by Sarah Hyland, unfolds as an explicit same-sex subplot instead of a glancing implication. The ensemble also seats LaMonica Garrett, Ian Anthony Dale, and Medalion Rahimi in visible roles, and the casting carries a quiet inclusiveness that never stops to announce itself. Nobody delivers a speech about it. The film casts, and then continues with the DJ set.

The abstentions are nearly as interesting as the inclusions. There is no climate anxiety, no indictment of the festival economy, no body-positive messaging, no neurodivergent arc, no revisionist tinkering with the historical record, and no third-act sermon. The closest the picture comes to an argument is a female protagonist navigating a male-dominated industry, and even that is texture, not thesis. A light progressive sensibility, then, and no lecturing whatsoever. As vintages go, this is a pleasant, unpretentious pour, one that will not age into anything more profound, and does not appear to want to.