Content warning: This article discusses rape and sexual assault. 

Ever since I saw the trailer two weeks ago, I’ve been anticipating watching Fair Play, starring Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich. It was released on Netflix Friday.

From the trailer, I expected it to be a romance gone wrong — which didn’t end up entirely untrue. I was also sure one of them was going to die.

The movie follows Emily Meyers and Luke Edmunds, a newly-engaged couple in a secret workplace relationship. They work for One Crest Capital, a highly-competitive hedge fund in New York City.

When one of their project managers gets fired, Meyers hears a rumor that Edmunds will get promoted. However, she ends up being the one to receive the promotion.

The tension between them — and not the good kind — becomes thick. Ehrenreich’s character’s jealousy seeps through, and you can see him slowly go crazy over the fact he didn’t get the promotion.

I couldn’t comprehend why it was so hard for Edmunds to understand the reason she got promoted was because she was good at her job. He was mediocre at best.

Their boss, played by Eddie Marsan, even told her “You’re not just navigating the box. You’re running circles around it.”

Edmunds behaved like a hypocrite. When under the impression he was getting the promotion, the couple was all lovey-dovey and celebrated his success. But as soon as Meyers got it, he began detaching himself from her. He became completely disrespectful.

At the beginning of the movie, Edmunds tells her, “I fucking love you so fucking much.” If that’s the case, why couldn’t he be supportive of her? Why did he have to gaslight and insult her?

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Ehrenreich truly felt like a villain the entire time. There were short, chilling scenes focused on him, and in them you could just feel the gears turn in his head. 

When Edmunds made a complete fool of himself, begging on his knees for a promotion. I got second-hand embarrassment and cringed so hard for him. The scene, however, was amazing. 

Afterward, he disappears like a coward just to barge into an important meeting the next day and have a drunken mental breakdown. He even tried to take Meyers down with him by exposing the illegality of their relationship.

If that wasn’t enough, he accused her in front of her family of sleeping her way to the top and later raped her. I struggled watching that scene because I didn’t expect it. It started as consensual sex, but after she asked him to stop, he didn’t.

I had to pause the movie because I was so angry and had to process what just happened. I never thought I could hate Ehrenreich in my life, but at the moment, it was hard for me to remember this was a movie. He played this role a little too well.

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I was glad when she finally had enough. My favorite part of the movie was when she went to work the next day and threw him under the bus, calling him crazy and obsessed with her.

Dynevor’s performance in this movie was outstanding. It was so exciting to see her in something outside of Bridgerton, where she also shines.

She perfectly captures who Emily Meyers is — a young woman who crawled her way out of Long Island to become a successful project manager at a big firm. She’s such a queen for that.

I still can’t believe he had the audacity to come back to their apartment, acting as if nothing happened and planning to move out. But I loved how she made him cry and beg her for forgiveness.

That scene was so intense. The whole movie, she clearly loved him, but you could now see the hatred in her eyes. I didn’t have any expectations for Dynevor prior to seeing this movie, but she blew me away.

“If I can’t make you cry, I’m gonna make you bleed,” Meyers said with a knife in her hand. That was honestly my favorite line in the whole movie.

Despite all the drama and mature content, I loved this movie. Dynevor and Ehrenreich actually became their characters. Every scene and fight was so intense I felt like I was there witnessing it all. 10 out of 10.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story’s subheading misspelled Phoebe Dynevor’s name. This story has been updated.