Voicemails for Isabelle Review

The project dates to 2019, when Hailee Steinfeld was attached, and Leah McKendrick took it over as writer and director in 2025. The premise is pure romantic comedy: Jill (Zoey Deutch), an aspiring baker working under an abusive chef, keeps confiding in her late sister's voicemail, and the number has been reassigned to Wes (Nick Robinson), a real estate agent in Austin. He listens to all of it, learns where she goes and what she wants, then talks his way onto a work trip to San Francisco and follows her out of a podcast taping.

The film treats this as a meet cute with a secret attached rather than the intrusion it is, which is a lot to ask of an audience. What works is the pair on screen. Deutch is quick and loose in the comic scenes, Robinson keeps Wes sheepish rather than sinister, and the grief material, Isabelle's long illness and the family she leaves behind, gives the film more weight than the formula needs. McKendrick also plays Breeda, one of Wes's engaged friends.

Netflix released it on June 19, 2026. Critics were kinder than the premise deserves, 88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes against a middling 62 on Metacritic, and at nearly two hours it is long for a romantic comedy.