Last Updated on March 12, 2026 by Monica Castillo
Reminders of Him is Rated PG-13 by Motion Picture Rating (MPA) for sexual content, strong language, drug content, some violent content, and brief partial nudity.
“Reminders of Him” opens not as a landmark of romantic cinema, but as the latest chapter in Hollywood’s ongoing embrace of Colleen Hoover a kind of slow-motion genre takeover that’s been gathering steam for years. Adapted from Hoover’s 2022 novel, the film arrives in the wake of the juggernaut success of 2024’s “It Ends with Us” and the more modestly received 2025 adaptation of “Regretting You.” Together, they’ve convinced studios that Hoover’s brand of tear-streaked, airport-paperback melodrama can be spun into box office gold, even if the results have often felt ungainly on screen. Those earlier films made it easy to question not only Hoover’s grip on the popular imagination, but also the wisdom of trying to bend such florid, emotionally blunt material into something resembling lived-in drama.
The center of that story is Kenna (Maika Monroe), newly released from prison after serving five years for her role in a tragic accident that claimed the life of her boyfriend, Scotty (Rudy Pankow). She returns to her hometown in Wyoming a place that now feels half-familiar, half-haunted—to try to piece together a life from the wreckage. Prison hasn’t only taken time from her; it has taken presence. She has a daughter, Diem (Zoe Kosovic), whom she has never been allowed to raise. The girl has been brought up by Scotty’s parents, Grace (Lauren Graham) and Patrick (Bradley Whitford), and Kenna arrives with a quiet, almost desperate hope that she might somehow carve out a place in her child’s life without blowing apart the fragile, hard-won stability Diem already has.
Living right across the street from Grace and Patrick is Ledger (Tyriq Withers), Scotty’s former best friend and a one-time football star whose glory days now feel like a closed chapter. Ledger has essentially become Diem’s honorary uncle, the kind of steady adult presence you can see a child clinging to instinctively. When Kenna, broke and exhausted, starts looking for work, she crosses paths with Ledger at the bar he runs. He doesn’t initially know who she is; the past hasn’t yet stepped out from behind the curtain. When he finally realizes that this woman this quietly wounded stranger he’s begun to feel protective of is the person the town collectively blames for Scotty’s death, he finds himself caught between competing loyalties. You can feel the shift in him: the instinct to help colliding with the ingrained narrative he’s been told about her for years.
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Ledger’s internal conflict quickly becomes one of the film’s most compelling undercurrents. He tries, with varying degrees of success, to keep Kenna away from Grace and Patrick, acutely aware of how her reappearance might shatter their fragile peace. Yet as Kenna and Ledger spend more time together, the neat moral categories start to dissolve. Feelings grow tentative at first, then less so and the film settles into the uneasy territory of a romance that should not exist, at least not in the eyes of almost everyone around them. For Kenna, who is juggling parole, poverty, guilt, and the ache of separation from Diem, this connection is both solace and risk. She knows that any misstep could destroy the slender chance she has at forgiveness, both from others and from herself. The secret she carries about the night Scotty died becomes the fulcrum around which everything turns.
Decker and Shlesinger wisely hold back the exact details of that night, saving the specifics of Kenna’s history with Scotty for later in the film. Instead of leaning on the mystery as a cheap hook, they use it as a quiet pulse something that hums beneath the surface while the real attention rests on the emotional aftershocks. Scotty is gone; what’s left are the people who must live with the shape of his absence. Ledger steps into a quasi-parental role with Diem, making sure she feels not just cared for but loved, while Grace and Patrick shoulder the heavier grief of raising their grandchild in a home their son no longer occupies. You can see how the routines they’ve built school runs, bedtime rituals, simple domestic tasks double as a way to hold their sorrow in check.
The first act lingers on Kenna’s return with a kind of patient, observational calm. We follow her through failed job interviews and small indignities, through the practical grind of starting over with almost nothing. She ends up in a rundown motel, a place that looks like it’s barely hanging together, and adopts a kitten partly out of kindness, partly because it’s cheaper than the alternatives. The cat becomes a small, unassuming symbol of responsibility, a life she can nurture when so much else has been taken from her. Kenna is unmistakably miserable, but the film doesn’t flatten her into pure victimhood. Instead, she drifts through old Wyoming haunts, revisiting places that now carry the weight of memory. She pours herself into a journal of letters to Scotty, talking to him as if he might somehow still be listening, using the acts of writing and remembering as a way to keep from falling apart. Those letters, as the movie presents them, become a kind of internal monologue, a space where she can admit things.
For Kenna, these flashbacks are double-edged. She’s grieving not just Scotty but the lost promise of a future that prison wrenched away. Behind bars, she gave birth to Diem, handing her over almost as soon as she arrived. The film gives us only fragments of her time inside, including a fellow inmate who offers a measure of support and solidarity. Those scenes are strong enough that you may find yourself wishing Decker and Shlesinger had pushed further in that direction. Kenna’s incarceration feels like a defining trauma, yet in the final balance, it remains more of a backdrop than a fully explored chapter. The movie’s true fixation is the burgeoning romance between Kenna and Ledger a relationship that grows increasingly intimate even as both participants understand how unforgivable it would appear from the outside looking in.
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This is where Decker’s sensibility becomes crucial. She has ample opportunity to steer the film toward overheated melodrama, to amplify every revelation, every confrontation, every tear. Hoover’s source material practically invites that kind of excess. Instead, Decker mostly resists the urge to go big. The notable exception is a sex scene that feels oddly dissonant with the overall register of sorrow and longing. It’s not that intimacy between Kenna and Ledger is unwarranted they’ve been moving toward each other for most of the film but the way the scene is staged and scored leans briefly into a more conventional, almost glossy eroticism that clashes with the otherwise subdued tone. For a moment, the movie feels like it’s trying on someone else’s idea of passion.
Outside of that misstep, the film’s handling of relationships and secrets is unexpectedly restrained. Rather than spiraling into shouting matches and grand pronouncements, Decker keeps the emotional temperature lower, allowing empathy to guide the scenes instead of hysteria. Kenna’s ordeal, especially as she edges closer to a possible reunion with the daughter she has only known in photographs and secondhand stories, is where the film’s heart beats strongest. You can feel the years of longing and self-reproach accumulating in her every move toward that girl. The closer she gets, the more you sense the fear that one wrong word, one wrong look, could send everything crashing down.
And yet, even with those structural stumbles, the film is anchored by performances that are better than the material might have demanded. Monroe finds a delicate balance between fragility and stubborn resilience in Kenna. Withers gives Ledger an emotional intelligence that keeps him from becoming just a stock “good guy,” layering guilt and decency in ways that feel lived-in. Graham and Whitford, both pros at playing wounded but functioning adults, bring quiet specificity to Grace and Patrick; you can see decades of parenting and grief in the smallest gestures. Together, they help the movie avoid the easy trap of turning any single character into a villain, which is no small feat in a story built on blame.
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What surprises most is not that a Colleen Hoover adaptation reaches for big feelings that’s baked into the DNA but that this particular production works so hard to earn them. Decker and Shlesinger can’t fully escape the formulas and contrivances that define Hoover’s work; the scaffolding of the genre is always visible if you care to look. But within that framework, they keep searching for flickers of genuine emotion: a glance that lingers a second too long, a line of dialogue that catches in the throat, a letter written to someone who can’t answer back. In a landscape where romantic dramas often confuse volume for depth, “Reminders of Him” at least has the decency to lower its voice and listen.
Reminders of Him Parents Guide
Violence & Intensity: The tragedy at the center of the story, a car accident that killed Scotty, hangs over nearly every scene, shaping how the town and Scotty’s family view Kenna after her release from prison. Flashbacks and conversations about that night bring the event back into focus, though the film avoids graphic imagery. What gives the story its weight are the confrontations and the quiet hostility Kenna faces when she returns home. The grief of Scotty’s parents and the lingering resentment from the community create moments that feel heavy and uncomfortable rather than violent in a traditional sense.
Language and profanity: There is a fair amount of strong language scattered throughout the film. Much of it surfaces during tense exchanges, particularly when characters confront Kenna about the past.
Sexual Content / Nudity: Kenna and Ledger’s relationship eventually becomes physical, and the film includes one clear sex scene. It isn’t graphic, but it’s unmistakably sexual and includes suggestive visuals and brief partial nudity. What stands out is how glossy the scene feels compared with the otherwise quiet, somber tone of the film.
Drugs, Alcohol & Smoking: Characters are shown drinking socially, and the setting naturally includes bottles, customers, and casual bar culture. The story also references drug use tied to the circumstances surrounding Scotty’s death, though these details are mostly discussed rather than shown directly.
Age Recommendations: The story deals with grief, guilt, incarceration, and the complicated process of forgiveness, for most families, it feels best suited to ages 14 or 15 and up, depending on maturity.
