Charli XCX’s ‘The Moment’ Turns Brat Summer Into a Horror Movie About Fame
Charli XCX Wakes Up From Brat Summer
Charli XCX’s meta mockumentary The Moment, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and directed by longtime collaborator Aidan Zamiri, plays like a hangover from “brat summer”: a sharp, anxious, often very funny look at pop stardom, internet culture, and what happens when a hyper‑online persona starts to eat the artist alive.
After more than a year of neon‑green memes and brat‑coded discourse, The Moment feels like both a curtain call and a post‑credits scene: Charli taking one last, self‑aware victory lap while also asking whether this whole era has been a bit of a never‑ending nightmare.
From ‘Brat’ Summer to Meta Hangover
To understand The Moment, you have to understand what “brat summer” became. Charli XCX’s 2024 album brat wasn’t just a record; it was a cultural weather system. The lurid green cover turned into a mood board, a meme template, a shorthand for reckless honesty and messy nightlife. Brat wasn’t just music; it was a vibe exported to TikTok, Twitter, and festival fields.
Aidan Zamiri has been visually steering that era in Charli’s videos—hyper‑stylized, slightly feral, always aware of the camera. The Moment extends that collaboration into feature length, using a mockumentary format that owes as much to reality TV and stan Twitter as it does to classic rock docs.
Where the album brought bratty confessionals to the club, the film brings them to the backstage corridor, the SUV ride, the hotel room at 3 a.m.—the liminal spaces where a pop star has to decide whether to be a person or a product. That tension is the film’s real subject.
Inside ‘The Moment’: Premise and Style
Structurally, The Moment plays like a tour‑diary documentary that keeps sabotaging itself. We follow “Charli XCX” prepping for performances, dealing with a camera crew, and trying to maintain control of her narrative even as the film keeps pulling that control away.
- Mockumentary bones: Talking‑head interviews, behind‑the‑scenes footage, crew interactions.
- Meta twist: The film constantly questions what’s staged, what’s authentic, and who is really directing whom.
- Tone: Equal parts comedy, cringe, and creeping dread—like a brat‑coded Spinal Tap filtered through Instagram stories.
Zamiri leans into visual exaggeration: blown‑out lighting, aggressive close‑ups, and editing that mimics the swipe‑addicted pace of social media. Yet there are quiet moments where the camera just lingers, daring Charli to drop the persona.
“If brat was about oversharing, The Moment is about wondering who’s actually listening—and what they expect in return,” one critic observed after the Sundance premiere.
Charli XCX as Character and Author
Charli plays “Charli XCX,” but it’s never clear how much of that character is strictly performance. She leans into the version of herself fans think they know: chaotic, self‑deprecating, brutally online. At the same time, the film hints at exhaustion—the cost of always being “on” for a fanbase that expects endless relatability.
That ambiguity is the point. Pop stars have long managed multiple personas, but Charli is one of the first major artists to fully integrate stan culture and meme logic into her brand. The Moment asks what happens when your audience is not just consuming the work but actively co‑writing your image in real time.
“I wanted to make something that felt like scrolling my own brain,” Charli has said in interviews about the project, describing the film as “a nightmare that’s also kind of hot.”
Whether you read that statement as deadpan humor or genuine vulnerability will probably shape how you experience the film.
Themes: Fame, Internet Culture, and the Neverending Party
Beneath the jokes, The Moment functions as a commentary on modern fame, especially for women in pop. It’s less “rise and fall of a star” and more “permanent middle of the storm,” where there’s no clean before or after—just constant flux and expectation.
- Hyper‑visibility as horror: The film treats the constant presence of cameras and phones like a low‑grade jump scare. Every candid feels pre‑staged, every backstage meltdown might be content.
- Stan culture feedback loops: Charli’s persona is shaped by a fandom that both adores and critiques her in real time. The Moment plays with this dynamic, hinting at parasocial relationships without fully pathologizing them.
- Brat as brand vs. brat as emotion: The neon‑green aesthetic began as a rebellious, slightly nihilistic mood. Here, it’s a brand package that has to be maintained—even when the person inside it might have outgrown the vibe.
The “neverending nightmare” of brat summer isn’t just about hangovers and late‑night drama; it’s about realizing that the party doesn’t end when you go home, because the internet never logs off.
Direction, Visuals, and Music: How ‘The Moment’ Plays
Zamiri’s direction keeps one foot in music‑video maximalism and the other in lo‑fi doc realism. The film weaponizes jump cuts, sudden zooms, and awkward silences to keep the viewer slightly off‑balance—mirroring the way Charli’s own public persona shifts from unbothered icon to oversharing friend within a single Instagram story.
Musically, The Moment is a playground for Charli’s catalog from the brat era and beyond. Tracks slam in and out of scenes, sometimes underscoring emotional beats, sometimes ironically undercutting them. It’s less a traditional soundtrack than a DJ set of her own career highlights.
On a big screen, the film’s mix of grainy textures and glossy performance footage feels intentionally unstable—as if even the movie can’t decide whether it’s a polished document or a leaked camera roll.
What Works—and Where ‘The Moment’ Stumbles
As a piece of pop‑culture commentary, The Moment is sharp and often very funny. The mockumentary conceit lets Charli poke fun at her own myth, and Zamiri clearly understands how to stage a moment that will live beyond the film as a gif or clip.
- Strengths:
- Charli’s willingness to play an unflattering, anxious version of herself.
- Inventive use of mockumentary tropes to critique music‑industry storytelling.
- Seamless integration of music, performance, and offstage life.
- A tone that captures the chaos of post‑pandemic pop culture without moralizing.
- Weaknesses:
- The meta angle may feel familiar to viewers already saturated with self‑aware music docs and reality parodies.
- At times, the film seems more interested in mood than in building a clear emotional arc, which may frustrate viewers looking for a straightforward narrative.
Several early reviews have described the film as “a funhouse mirror held up to the last decade of pop,” praising its willingness to show how exhausting constant reinvention can be.
If you’re invested in Charli’s discography, the film plays like richly annotated bonus material. If you’re not, it may feel more like an intriguing experiment than a fully satisfying standalone story.
Verdict: The End of an Era, or Just Another Era?
The Moment is credited here as a film that doesn’t neatly answer whether it’s closing the book on brat summer or simply reframing it as prologue for whatever Charli does next. That ambiguity is part of its charm.
As a document of 2020s pop culture—where every release is also a meme, a discourse generator, and a lifestyle kit—The Moment feels oddly definitive. It understands that the modern pop star is both author and algorithm, and it’s not sure that’s healthy.
For fans, this is essential viewing: a playful, knowingly uncomfortable self‑portrait of an artist who has built a career out of being slightly ahead of the zeitgeist and slightly annoyed by it. For casual viewers, it’s an inventive, if occasionally indulgent, riff on the mockumentary that captures what “brat” looked and felt like from the inside.
Rating: 4/5
If brat summer was the party, The Moment is the 4 a.m. debrief in a diner booth: messy, revealing, and strangely hopeful about what happens when the lights finally come up.
