The minefield of dating in the modern world is deftly explored in the first two acts of Susanna Fogel’s Cat Person. Adapted from a viral New Yorker short story by Kristen Roupenian, the film casts an eye across the impossible chasm between a polished digital persona and the warts-and-all in-person interaction; between the expectations and romantic approaches of Margot (Emilia Jones), a gen Z college student, and a millennial older man Robert (Nicholas Braun).

But the precision and economy of the story, with its needling doubts and queasy, churning-gut instincts, is lost in a third act that escalates into a lurid, messily violent generic climax that is both infinitely dumber and far less unsettling than the tense, uneasy courtship that precedes it.