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What If
Movie

What If

2023 • Drama, Romance

Woke Score
2
out of 10

Plot

When a pair of newlywed musicians get trapped in a storm on their island honeymoon, they must face difficult truths that could tear their marriage apart.

Overall Series Review

The film focuses on the high-stakes personal drama of newlyweds Billie and Jecs, who find their marriage fractured during a secluded island honeymoon and a severe storm. The main source of conflict is highly internal, stemming from buried truths about their expectations for the future, particularly concerning careers, commitment, and having children. The narrative avoids political lecturing, instead presenting a raw, emotional conflict about two people with fundamentally incompatible desires who mistook passion for permanent commitment. The crisis forces both the husband and wife to face their individual hopes and fears, with the storm acting as a device to strip away their pretense of a perfect relationship. As a Filipino production, the casting is culturally authentic to the setting and story.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics1/10

The movie is a Filipino production featuring Filipino actors, and the core conflict is relational, not racial or political. The narrative does not utilize race or immutable characteristics to lecture on systemic oppression or privilege. The casting is authentic to the production's origin, showing genuine colorblind casting within a specific cultural context.

Oikophobia1/10

The conflict remains entirely personal, centering on the couple's relationship failure. There is no evidence of the film expressing hostility toward Western civilization, the local culture of the Philippines, or deconstructing the nation's heritage. The island setting is used as a metaphorical cage to force the couple's confrontation, not as a statement on the local culture being corrupt or spiritually inferior.

Feminism6/10

The score is elevated due to the central plot point where the wife explicitly refuses to have children, citing a personal 'condition' and her belief that she is not fit for parenthood, which clashes with the husband's desire for a family. This strong anti-natalist element forms the primary wedge that threatens the dissolution of the marriage, framing motherhood as a choice that is definitively rejected by the female lead in favor of her own truth and career aspirations, though the male character is not depicted as bumbling or toxic.

LGBTQ+1/10

The narrative centers entirely on the drama of a male-female, newlywed, nuclear relationship. There is no presence of alternative sexual ideologies, focus on gender theory, or deconstruction of the traditional family unit as an oppressive structure. Sexuality and relationships are presented through a normative structure.

Anti-Theism1/10

The film is a secular relationship drama focused on the immediate emotional and relational consequences of personal choices. There is no material within the plot or themes that expresses hostility toward religion, Christianity, or faith. Moral conflict is strictly limited to the subjective terms of the broken marital covenant and the characters' individual desires.