Zola is one glittery, jittery trip through hoodrat hell. 

Based on the infamous 2015 Twitter thread that became a viral sensation, it’s a skeevy, sweat-soaked skankfest, a cautionary tale for those who foolishly think working the pole is a quick and easy way to make ends meet. Man, didn’t we learn anything from The Players Club?

We’ve got Taylour Page as title character Aziah “Zola” King, the same woman who spent 148 tweets documenting the batshit-crazy time she had stripping and trapping in Florida with a white girl she barely knew. The white girl in question is Stefani (originally Jess in the thread), played by the usually uninhibited Riley Keough. 

Zola and Stefani first meet when Zola waits on Stefani at her restaurant job, locking eyes and immediately sparking a connection that makes it seem like this is the beginning of a lesbian love story. But nothing Sapphic pops up between these two, even when Stefani invites Zola to a road trip to Tampa, where they’ll make money dancing for horny, slack-jawed Florida men. Also along for the ride is Stefani’s dim-witted boyfriend Derek (Nicholas Braun) and her “friend” X (Colman Domingo, getting his suave, sinister flim-flam man on).

Zola eventually finds out that Stefani does more than strip in the Sunshine State. Our heroine gets forced by X (who starts talking in a thick African accent whenever he gets angry) to tag along with Stefani for an evening of Backpage tricking in a swanky hotel room. While Zola doesn’t do any tricking herself, she encourages Stefani to be more enterprising by telling her to increase her price.

This pitch-black road farce for Lipstick Alley readers comes courtesy of African-American filmmaker Janicza Bravo; she co-wrote the script with playwright/current Broadway darling Jeremy O. Harris, whose Slave Play will most likely pick up a slew of Tonys this year. As she’s shown with her debut 2017 feature Lemon (which she co-wrote with husband/star Brett Gelman) and shorts like Gregory Go Boom (where Michael Cera played a bitter, love-starved paraplegic who ultimately sets himself on fire), Bravo goes to stylish lengths to capture morally ugly characters in all their reprehensible glory. And Zola just might be her malevolent masterpiece.

Most of the people who populate this film, for lack of a better word, ain’t shit. Even Zola, who gets stuck as Stefani’s liaison during a night of intense hooking, goes along instead of doing everything humanly possible to get the hell away from these lunatics. (She is basically being kidnapped, after all.) Leading the charge is sheisty sociopath Stefani, whom Keough plays like Bhad Bhabie if she didn’t become a viral sensation who somehow landed a rap career. Keough really amps up the trailer-park trampiness, giving us the sort of down-for-whateva, Black girl-wannabe who, to paraphrase an old Dave Chappelle line, would be the most dangerous woman in a group of sistas. (Unlike Keough, Paige doesn’t get to chew up scenery. She’s stuck in straight-man mode for most of the movie.) If anything, Zola  reminds Black women to never acquaint themselves with white women who sound Blacker than them.

Since this is based on viral literature, Bravo crafts an ass-out (or ass-up) adventure for people who live their lives one social-media post at a time. Whether it’s the sound of pings whenever someone says something red-flaggish or sequences that resemble someone scrolling through Instagram, Bravo never lets you forget that this movie has been designed for audiences who’ll probably end up watching it  on their iPhones.

Ultimately, Zola mostly goes on a road to nowhere. The movie doesn’t end so much as it just gives up. (The thread had a more satisfying conclusion.) For all its 21st-century, visual cleverness, the story itself is entertainingly ratchet, but still vapid. And for a movie that’s essentially about the horrors of sex trafficking, the whole so-insane-it’s-funny vibe starts to become off-putting after a while. (It also definitely doesn’t make the case that sex work is a legitimate profession that should be respected as such.) 

A lot of ‘hood people out there may see Zola and call it  the movie of the year, a movie that finally speaks to them. But it reminded me of the videos that mostly make up WorldStarHipHop, where people of color often record themselves doing the most ignorant shit in public, usually for likes and views. Yeah, it might elicit a few laughs, but it’s also embarrassing and unsettling as hell. It’s recorded proof (much like Zola’s thread) that there are a lot of savage, ghetto-ass Black people doing wrong all over the place — just as white people always suspected.

But hey — to quote the Jay-Z song “Ignorant Shit,” it’s only entertainment. 

C

“Zola” is out Wednesday in theaters.