Plenty of people can relate to the idea of having a voice in the back of one’s head spewing self-doubt and crippling negativity. Hollywood, hardly an industry known for its compassionate professionals, is not exactly the greatest environment for those carrying around that kind of baggage. Director/writer Justine Bateman’s Violet presents a unique perspective of a mind in turmoil when faced with nothing but rot.

Violet Calder (Olivia Munn) is a 32-year-old film executive who constantly hears a voice (Justin Theroux) pointing out all of her perceived flaws and deficiencies. Cursive text on the screen purports to share a different side of Violet’s personality, her inner desire to be something more than an awful person. Most of the people around Violet are pretty awful as well, especially her boss (Dennis Boutsikaris), who never misses an opportunity to humiliate her in front of clients or her coworkers.

With regard to Violet as a person, Bateman initially presents the text and Theroux’s voice as a kind of good angel, bad angel dynamic wrestling for control. As the film plays on, it’s clear that Violet is really more of a three headed Hydra, with Munn’s performance acting as a third form of driving force powering the character. The 92-minute runtime comes and goes without leaving any clear impression of the kind of person Violet wants to be.

Munn isn’t really a neutral arbiter between her two unseen voices, but her character never rises above a predictable trope. Other characters constantly talk about what a talented film executive Violet is, but we never see anything resembling genuine passion from her as a character. Even if you accept Violet as someone jaded by years in the business, she never comes across as someone who ever liked making movies. The cursive text designed to present an alternative to the jaded figure never feels like a genuine depiction of Violet’s character.

At times, it’s hard to tell if Bateman is trying to be satirical about the film industry, or if Violet is plagued with a bad supporting cast unable to deliver their lines in a convincing manner. There’s scene after scene of characters spouting generic Hollywood jargon into the abyss. Violet is far too pretentious to be aware of its own insufferable narrative, the worst kind of Hollywood film about Hollywood.

Much of the film’s core problem could have been alleviated if Munn or Bateman managed to give Violet a concrete point of view. Instead, it all plays out like watching an individual who knows that they’re a bad person but can’t do anything about it because they don’t care enough to change. For anyone who feels jaded at the idea that we’ll see a more inclusive, different film industry, Violet provides stark validation that the people in charge certainly won’t do anything to alter the status quo. If those findings felt at all earned as a result of the narrative and not in spite of it, maybe this might have been a worthwhile experience.

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