On paper, Jenna Ortega is becoming one of America’s biggest, and busiest, young actors. She’s everywhere—from a hit TV show (Netflix’s Wednesday, which drops half of its second season this week), to hit horror films (Scream and X), to a hit legacy-quel (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice). She’s raked in money at the box office and has even nabbed an Emmy nomination. We talk about Pedro Pascal being inescapable at the moment, but Ortega has got to be right on his heels. And many of her projects have been quite successful.
But there’s one small question remaining: For all of her adventures on-screen, has Ortega been in anything good?
Far too often to this point in her career, we’ve found Ortega playing a version of a moody teenager in a mediocre IP vehicle. And when she’s strayed outside franchises for parts in independent and original dramas, the projects have at times been even worse (if you watched the Weeknd movie Hurry Up Tomorrow, you may be entitled to compensation). Ortega herself is not the problem in these endeavors—she commits to her roles regardless of the quality of the material and has shown so much potential that she’s established a broad and committed fan base. But with all of the momentum Ortega has built, the discourse around her career shouldn’t be dominated by fans publicly criticizing her agent.
What makes her list of credits all the more baffling is the fact that she speaks so knowledgeably about film in interviews—citing works that range from the classic silent drama The Passion of Joan of Arc to the art house horror staple Possession. Yet she continues to pop up in lazy reboots and cringey dramas. She’s often a highlight of these … middling films, but they are middling nonetheless.
The way I see it, there are five potential paths Ortega could be charting for her career, and only one of them is ideal. But which is she aiming for? Let’s dive in and weigh the pros and cons of each.
Path 1: IP Slop
Let’s get this out of the way: I have no respect for this path. Studios that wring out their intellectual property for every ounce of money are a disease in our culture and will be the death of cinema as we know it. OK, now that that’s settled … this is obviously the path with the most guaranteed success! Who am I to judge someone for being unable to resist that sweet smell of recycled content and a $300 million budget? I mean, hell, even rebooting The Naked Gun produced one of the most successful box office openings for a comedy in years. Give the people what they want: things they already know.
Ortega’s already found success in this arena. The Addams Family spinoff Wednesday has provided probably her signature role at the moment—earning her an Emmy nomination as well as countless TikToks of her dancing to a sped-up Lady Gaga song, which I presume is a good thing. Plus, her Beetlejuice reboot did big numbers at the box office, as did her Scream sequels (more on those later).
Of course, these types of roles would not deter the “fire your agent” jokes. In fact, they’re the roles that got those jokes going in the first place. On Season 1 of Wednesday, a fine show that I would affectionately describe as “none of my business,” Ortega’s character is caught in a love triangle between two trendy Gen Z boys who are scarier than anything else in the Addams Family universe: One is a barista and the son of a sheriff (spoiler: I could’ve told you he was a monster before he transformed into one), and one is a ponytailed tortured artist (literally—he draws monsters that come to life and attack him). Plot points like this, coupled with moments when Wednesday says “mansplaining” or attends a dance soundtracked by Dua Lipa, make the show ripe for accusations of being cringe. (Ortega herself has been openly critical of the Wednesday scripts.) Meanwhile, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, while perfectly fine, didn’t offer Ortega a ton to do. The movie naturally invites you to compare her to late ’80s Winona Ryder, which isn’t helped by the fact that Ryder is also in it, and most of the comedy is shouldered by Michael Keaton and Catherine O’Hara. This leaves Ortega to carry the film’s emotional stakes, which she’s game for—but that’s no one’s favorite part of the movie.
There’s a ceiling to the success achieved on this path. The roles usually aren’t great, and, Wednesday Emmy nom notwithstanding, they’re rarely rewarded with accolades even when they are. If Ortega’s looking to elevate herself into serious actor territory, franchise projects probably aren’t the way to do it. Relatedly …
Path 2: Horror Slop
Along the way, Ortega has fashioned herself into Gen Z’s preeminent scream queen (rivaled by only Mia Goth). Her roles in X, Scream, Scream VI, and the gothic-inspired Wednesday brought her this status and have undoubtedly resulted in some of her most successful work to date. The critically acclaimed X spawned a popular horror franchise that has prestige-level credibility, and her Scream sequels produced massive box office returns. Plus, she can easily tap into a deadpan demeanor and sport goth-glam red carpet looks that elevate this persona.
Still, this path has many of the same issues as the IP pursuit. Outside of Wednesday—which dabbles in horror aesthetics but is hardly scary—Ortega hasn’t really landed a meaty role in a spooky flick. She had a supporting role in X, and while her bloodcurdling scream has lived on as reaction video fodder, Goth is definitively the face of that franchise—and X was quickly overshadowed by its prequel, Pearl. Ortega’s Scream sequels, the first of which sidelines her in a hospital bed for nearly its entire running time, are also pretty unmemorable installments in that franchise, despite their financial success. So far, this path has offered little in the way of serious recognition, although booking more compelling horror roles could change that.
Path 3: Elevated Slop
Slop comes in all shapes and sizes. Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t limited to soulless reboots and sequels. A movie can come packaged with all the signifiers of a prestige indie drama, and you can still find muck underneath those lens flares and dream sequences. I call this elevated slop.
I’ll give Ortega the benefit of the doubt here and assume that she keeps mistakenly falling for slop in A24’s clothing, because I struggle to defend some of her recent choices. Last year, she starred in the “erotic thriller” (read: light Wattpad smut) Miller’s Girl, in which she plays a horny high school senior who sets out to seduce her English teacher (Martin Freeman) so that she has an accomplishment to write about in her Yale application. If that edgelord-fantasy premise doesn’t sound bad enough, there’s a scene in which she and her teacher make out soundtracked by a cover of “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” sung like an audition for The Voice. (The top Letterboxd review for Miller’s Girl: “jenna ortega girl I’m going to get you a new agent just hold tight … dear god.”)
Earlier this year, she appeared in A24’s Death of a Unicorn opposite Paul Rudd; the movie is essentially a DCOM with cuss words and was marketed like a cool horror-comedy, even though it’s about as cinematic (and funny) as a credit card commercial. And worst of all, Ortega took on the Weeknd’s album companion film, Hurry Up Tomorrow, in which she plays a Weeknd stan who at one point pulls up his Spotify page and explains to him why each of his songs is smart and important. It’s a completely thankless role (probably not helped by the fact that Hurry Up Tomorrow barely made back half of its $15 million budget), and no one should have to act out the Weeknd’s weird fantasies! I thought that we’d learned this from The Idol!
Elevated slop appears to be the path Ortega is choosing for at least the foreseeable future. Her upcoming projects include an “untitled J.J. Abrams film”—yes, the guy who’s coming off an unwatchable Star Wars sequel and whose only stab at an original feature was a blatant Spielberg rip-off. Then she has two other films, one of which is directed by Taika Waititi. I’ll spare you the regurgitated Waititi discourse, but to briefly recap: His stock has dropped catastrophically since he won an Oscar in 2020 for Jojo Rabbit. (Which, for the record, is not a good movie. But I’m not here to engage in the discourse!) He followed that up with the Thor sequel Love and Thunder, which received very mixed reviews, and the soccer movie Next Goal Wins, which hardly anyone bothered to see. This downward trajectory makes it hard to imagine that his next feature will right the ship for Ortega.
The other yet to be released film on Ortega’s docket is Cathy Yan’s The Gallerist, a thriller set in the art world (and one of the eight upcoming features Charli XCX is allegedly starring in). This will be Yan’s first film after directing the Harley Quinn flick Birds of Prey in 2020, which, unfortunately, did fall under the category of IP slop. But thanks to Yan’s talent behind the camera, it was at least on the inoffensive side of the genre. Of Ortega’s three forthcoming projects, this is the one I’m at least mildly intrigued by.
Path 4: Playing a Rebellious Teenager Forever
Ortega’s background as a child actor—she broke through at age 12 in Jane the Virgin and had a lead role in the Disney Channel sitcom Stuck in the Middle—makes it seem like she’s been playing teen roles for quite a while. But Ortega is still only 22, so the age difference between her and her 16-year-old character Wednesday Addams isn’t that-one-background-character-in-Grease levels of egregious.
What is egregious, however, is that she’s been typecast as the exact same type of teenager across all of these roles: a moody, quirky, goth- or alt-leaning teen with rebellious tendencies. From The Fallout to Miller’s Girl to Death of a Unicorn and even Wednesday, she’s often rehashing a troubled character who has a complicated relationship with her parents and a penchant for going against the grain. Even when movies like X or Finestkind seemed to indicate that she was graduating to more adult material, she still ended up right back in high school talking about how her mom doesn’t understand her.
Path 5: Champion of Cinema?
During the 2024 press tour in the run-up to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Ortega bravely put herself under Film Twitter’s microscope via a Letterboxd “Four Favorites” video. For those unaware, this is an interview series in which a celebrity is asked what their four favorite films are, but Letterboxd’s cinephile user base makes the question incredibly loaded.
Ortega’s picks? La Haine, Barry Lyndon, The Passion of Joan of Arc, and Paris, Texas. Suffice to say, she passed the test with flying colors! As a bonus, in the clip she even explains what La Haine is to an unfamiliar O’Hara and calls Joan of Arc a “dream character.” She’s also previously shouted out other film scholar favorites like A Brighter Summer Day, In a Lonely Place, and Possession.
Now, how does a young Edward Yang acolyte get roped into telling the Weeknd that his music “is more personal than people realize”? I don’t have an answer for that, but all hope is not lost. Jenna Ortega, this 20-something Letterboxd user who treats repertory screenings like therapy sessions pleads to you: Come join us! We may not have Netflix money, but we have extremely pointed opinions about movies! (Case in point: this article.) I implore you to put down the CGI unicorn and use your impeccable taste for good!
I’m not saying that Ortega can just go out there and find the next Wim Wenders, but doesn’t it seem like a talented actor who is clearly equipped with deep film knowledge and a refined palate should be in something, well, good? I can’t imagine that anyone was confusing the script for Miller’s Girl with Stanley Kubrick. Millie Bobby Brown has straight up said that she doesn’t watch movies, so when she stars in some mess like The Electric State, I get it. But Ortega obviously has a discerning eye! If her agent wants to keep their job—or, you know, decrease the number of threats against them—maybe they should trust that eye more often.
