Zola review: An eccentric, internet-savvy stripper saga

At long last: she’s here. Nearly six years after A’ziah “Zola” King penned the Twitter thread to end all Twitter threads, A24’s highly anticipated adaption of her wild stripper saga finally hits theaters. Though at times it feels slightly aimless, Zola fills the shoes (or rather, stripper heels) of its Tweet-based source material and delivers a sharply directed saga anchored by a story too good to be true and a quartet of impressive performances.

Based on a (highly publicized) true Twitter thread, Zola follows the titular Zola (Taylour Paige), a waitress from Detroit who moonlights as an exotic dancer. After making fast friends with fellow stripper Stefani (Riley Keough), Zola agrees to accompany her on a trip to Miami for a money-making weekend alongside Stefani’s bumbling boyfriend Derrek (Nicholas Braun) and pimp X (Colman Domingo).

Things quickly go south, and before she knows it, Zola finds herself on a nonstop two-day whirlwind of slippery situation after slippery situation – all documented via social media.

Zola walks a tricky line when it comes to its source material – not only does it have to navigate how heavily it wants to lean into the now-viral Twitter thread, it also grapples with the fact that the internet is a notoriously difficult phenomenon to depict on film without coming off as dated or clunky. Luckily, Zola navigates both these issues with ease, though it handles one slightly more effectively than the other.

It’s easy to envision a version of Zola that ditches the social media tie-in altogether and goes for a straight narrative approach, director Janicza Bravo opts to embrace the film’s digital roots, frequently peppering the film with onscreen text, iPhone sound effects, and even a few Tweets from the original thread.

Speaking of the original thread, Zola mostly sticks to (the admittedly bonkers) script laid out in King’s original thread – though the film does make a few key departures, mostly surrounding Derrek (Braun) and X (Domingo), along with key characters’ names. For the most part, the departures work to the film’s advantage – the film cuts quite a bit of fat from the original thread, resulting in a short but sweet runtime of a mere hour and 25 minutes. On the other hand, though, the film might’ve benefited from keeping a few key beats in the thread – particularly, the depth King’s thread goes into surrounding her interactions with Stefani’s boyfriend Derrek.

Zola gives Paige, Keough, and Domingo plenty of time to shine in their respective roles, but Derrek feels particularly underserved by the film’s breakneck pacing – considering he’s one of just four major characters, he could’ve stood to receive a little more depth, especially because we know from Kings’ thread that he and Zola had several significant interactions the film omitted. It’s unfortunate because Braun is a tremendous talent who nails the few scenes he does have – but with how the film manages its time, Derrek falls by the wayside and feels relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

The rest of the trio, though, rounds out nicely, and the entire film is anchored by Taylour Paige’s wary, often straight-man leading performance, an element the film would not work without. Zola herself isn’t a particularly flashy character -she stands up for herself when push comes to shove, sure, but most of her screen time is spent staring incredulously at the chicanery unfolding around her – but nevertheless, Paige shines with her masterful micro-expressions and deadpan delivery.

The perfect yin to her yang is Riley Keough as the loudmouthed stripper/prostitute Stefani, whose antics and shifty behavior slingshot the film (and Zola herself) from one location to the next faster than you can type 140 characters and hit ‘send’. Stefani is comically unbearable – from her reedy voice to her eccentric style to her bizarre relationship with Derrek, she’s the perfect love-to-hate-her figure to balance out the level-headed, observant Zola. Stefani’s proclivity for mouthing off is brought to life perfectly in Keough’s spirited performance, and her late-game retelling of the events from her point of view is certainly one of the film’s highlights.

Rounding out the cast is Colman Domingo as Stefani’s pimp X, a shady figure who serves as one of the film’s many antagonists. X marks the most significant departure from the original thread, but even with the slightly more outlandish additions to his character, Colman Domingo (who never seems to be able to put a foot wrong) sell his role with the expected gusto to match the electric energy created by the rest of the cast. This core quartet is the spark that lights Zolas’ fuse, but the real magic comes from Janicza Bravo, who injects the story with a magnetic vivacity that makes the film nearly impossible to look away from.

Granted, it’s not perfect – if anything, Zola could’ve stood to gain 15-20 minutes to further build characters and figure out a tighter, more cohesive ending – but when your source material is a 148-tweet Twitter thread that veers wildly every third tweet or so, it’s remarkable that Bravo was able to piece together a narrative as coherent as the final product is.

Leaning heavily into its viral source material, brought to life by clever direction, and propelled to new heights thanks to a quartet of strong leads, Zola is an unforgettable trip from start to finish.