After the last Cineworld unlimited card screening turned out to be 'Incredibles 2', I was expecting big things from this film. I was lucky enough to be able to see the film a month before it comes out for the rest of the public which was great and made me really excited to see it. It also allowed me to see what the film was all about too, as I hadn't really seen or heard much about the film beforehand, but what I saw was a really weirdly made film in a format I haven't seen before from a film. But are the ideas that this film brings to the table revolutionary, or an idea that is best left in the past? Here are my thoughts.
The film started well by introducing us to the characters straight away. It jumped straight into introducing the audience to the main characters of the film and it instantly revealed what was so revolutionary about this film - the whole thing was off of a computer screen. Clips of facetime calls and surfing through social media and website pages were the entirety of the film. The film started with a form of instant messaging which was effective and allowed the audience to find out a bit more about the characters, giving us an interesting perspective into the relationship between father and daughter in the film. I think that the use of an instant messaging chat to kick the film off was really interesting and definitely helped the film to catch the attention of the audience well. I found the idea of having the full film essentially on screens to be really well done, I loved the transition from screen to screen and the movement around the screen too which helped the audience gain a great perspective of what was going on. The technique of clearly zooming in on the most important parts of the screen was especially effective. The idea of watching facetime calls gave the film a great, personal touch as it enabled us to essentially feel as if we were part of the video calls and that we as an audience had an active role in the films plot. I felt that this was really refreshing and essential to the positive way that the film portrayed itself to the audience. The film utilised this screen theme well too, by adding in pop ups and typical computer system messages such as "Norton hasn't been activated in 600 days". This really helped to give the film an element of realism and really helped to build up and intensify the story; simply because it made the scenes relatable and it helped to add in some humour to the scenes too which I liked. The film got the audience involved in the storyline very well too in other ways, such as characters constantly asking questions of previous scenes which helped to get the audience curious - and essentially creating detectives out of everyone and forcing the audience to try and match up the clues. I really enjoyed how the film had this effect on the audience and surprisingly, it managed to wrap up all of its loose ends well, I didn't find myself walking out of the cinema with any burning questions about why something happened or how. This I found impressive, usually these types of films don't seem to answer all of the questions, but thankfully this film did and I feel that use of a strong plot really helped with this too. Right from the beginning, the plot was slowly introduced, in order to allow the audience to get to know the characters and their relationships which helped to make the film personal to the audience. This was done well so then when Margot went missing, we as an audience really felt like we knew the character, which again helped to get the audience nervous and constantly questioning why things were happening and different possible leads and clues. I especially liked the relevance of the plot too, I feel that in this day and age a film about online abductions and a 'secret online life' is really relevant and the use of some popular and some 'not so popular' social media pages was really nice and refreshing to see and to be honest I'm surprised we haven't seen any similar films like this in the past. The plot was very solid and the film essentially held the audiences hand and walked us through the plot of the story, again through assistance of having constant questions and dilemmas faced by the characters which forced the audience to think on their feet alongside the film. Many parts of the film I was prepared for, but towards the end the film it really surprised me by adding in a variety of different twists and surprises which I wasn't expecting at all. These were twists that weren't only unpredictable but they were also clearly explained - similarly to a crime documentary - which was really helpful in helping the audience to understand what was going on. There weren't too many of these twists either, just enough to keep the film interesting and to trick the audience into thinking that they have cracked the case, only for the film to take a completely unexpected path. This did have a really good effect on the audience and it kept the film engaging and enthrilling as we were constantly excited to see where the case would go.
The film, as many do, had a few side stories to it. I felt that these were really important to the main story and again, helped to establish the different types of characters in the film and the relationships that they had with each other. They didn't take up too much time either which I thought was impressive and they even had the positive effect of allowing the audience to feel as if they knew the most up to date information - even before many other characters on the case. Other characters such as the families of other characters and their friends were well established too and introduced throughout the film. It helped to really solidify our impressions of the characters and despite them changing and adapting throughout the film, I didn't at any point feel confused or unsure as to why two characters were not getting on or why they felt a certain way as everything was explained well. Speaking of emotions, this film managed different emotions very well. The film was able to utilise the father's sadness and the "fish_n_chips" characters mother with cancer to evoke an emotional response from the audience and to help us feel a real connection to the plot of the story. But in other parts, such as the nasty memes that were made mocking the father it was different but had a similar effect. Here the film was able to manipulate the emotions of the audience to feel angry and annoyed at the people who were trolling him, this was done really well and cleverly. The use of audio in this film was amazing too, the manner in which typical computer sounds were combined with various everyday social media notifications to manipulate the audiences feelings was done really well. Simple sounds such as facetime ringing sound had a real impact on us as an audience, simply because that is what the film focused on and combined this with a quiet but effective background audio to build tension and nervousness in the audience - without us actually being aware of it. The manner in which the film actually evoked reactions and emotions in this film was done amazingly.
I may have missed the beginning of the film due to no adverts (typical really!) but throughout the film there were a few issues and problems that I had with the films plot, characters and general presentation. Throughout the film, I cringed during any messaging scene really. Yes they were refreshing and cool to see, but the actual content of the messages being sent were so typical and boring that it kind of reminded me of an Apple advertisement, simply because they had no emotion and just didn't portray the characters emotions very well in my opinion. Linking to this, I don't feel that it was just the message dialogue that seemed poor, but at the beginning of the film the speech dialogue was very empty and didn't really seem to have much emotion at all which didn't really help the film to have the strong start that I feel it could've with some better dialogue. There seemed to be a lot of scenes that made me question the authenticity of the film too, for example during one scene, the father goes onto a 10 year old contact list and funnily enough the characters seem to have kept the same phone number which I thought was disappointing and just made it too easy for the characters and just seemed to be very lazy and unbelievable. This seemed to happen at various points in the film, scenes that relied on the audience just believing and accepting what had happening without stopping to let us think and question whether it was actually viable and realistic. Towards the ending of the film, Margot is found at the bottom of a 50 foot cliff, passed out. Yes, it was good to display her typing with her Dad to show how the story had developed, but I feel that it was a step too far that she was in full health and seemed to be relatively unaffected by the fall. It made me question the authenticity of the film once again and made me question how anyone would survive that. But this time in a negative manner. Some of the emotions that were shown by different characters were a bit hit and miss too, sometimes characters seemed to be very over emotional, whereas in other scenes there wasn't really any emotions displayed at all which again, was a little unprofessional and slightly ruined the moods that the film was trying to convey as the characters didn't always seem to support this with their actions.
Overall I would give this film an 8.5, simply because I feel that it showed ambition to experiment with how we as an audience interact with films and this really paid off. The film was cleverly done, it was tense, it conveyed emotions to the audience very well, it got the audience involved well and it had a strong and intriguing plot that is relevant to the present too! The film was really entertaining and even though some parts of the film weren't the most realistic or even the most professional, I still feel that this will be one of the best films of the year. The film even kept the audience questioning after the girl was 'confirmed' dead and kept the mysterious and interesting theme present in the film - a really intriguing and mysterious film, but very good nonetheless.
Thank you for reading my review, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did watching the film and writing this review. I have tried to not include too many explicit descriptions of the scenes, as the film is not out for a while and I don't want to ruin it for those who are really excited about seeing it. Thanks again and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. :)
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