American romance movies designed for young adults and teenagers have a cliché narrative where the boy and the girl move through many obstacles but their relationship ultimately culminates in a happy ending.
'The In Between' has a completely different storyline with genres as diverse as teenage romance and supernatural horror crafted swiftly in a single movie.
The lead protagonist Tessa comes from a broken household without her real father and mother and pursues photography as a hobby.
She meets Skylar in a movie theatre, an optimistic idealist who is at the same time intellectual and involved in sports, something which breaks the stereotype of films of this genre.
They pursue a relationship by the turn of events and the real story begins when a horrible car accident takes away Skylar's life and badly injures Tessa, who barely makes it.
Tessa, unable to process the fact that Skylar is gone for good, leads a miserable life. But after some time, she feels that she is being contacted by Skylar from another realm.
She meets a woman named Doris in the hospital who herself is an author of a book about contacting dead people and although Tessa initially doesn’t believe her, she finally comes to realise the fact that Skylar has some unfulfilled wishes that he wants to fulfil.
Those wishes coincide with her own wishes too, and eventually, they meet in another realm. But Tessa finally comes back realising that the world is not as bad a place she thought it to be.
The movie is one of the first of its kind as it mixes the traditional horror element of spirits coming back to life with a high school environment and the broken household of both the characters project an accurate picture of the problems faced by modern-day young adults who are on the verge of transitioning to their adulthood.
It also is an emotional roller coaster as many people will be able to relate to the grief and agony faced by Tessa and Skylar. The movie is adopted from Marc Klein's book of the same name and does a good job of sticking to the original plotline of the book.
The movie is a tear-jerker but at the same time, a welcome deviation from the stereotypical young adult love stories. It is available on Netflix and is already among the trending programs in Bangladesh.
