BEFORE: You see, everything has a funny way of working out, at least when I invest some time to do some proper planning, that is. I could have watched this one right after "Now You See Me 2", but my chain went a different way last year, but that one got sandwiched between a Michael Caine film and another Jesse Eisenberg film - "Café Society" was more important to me at the time, so I had to make a choice. That left this little film with all by itself for well over a year, no way to link to it. But now that I've seen "Disaster Artist", I was able to rescue it from the Unlinkables section, so Dave Franco carries over.
However, this means that I couldn't follow the James Franco link, so now that leaves films like "The Vault" on Netflix temporarily stranded. I'm going to watch another James Franco film later this year, as part of the Nicole Kidman chain, but there's no way to both carry on with the chain I have planned, and work in more James Franco, it's one or the other. I also have never seen "127 Hours", and I have access to an old Academy screener of that, even if it's not available streaming right now. But I'll have to just try and get to these next year, because I'm rapidly running out of slots for 2018, I have just 44 left after tonight and they're all spoken for.
But you see how following one thread means that I have to abandon all of the others, at least for the time being. Still, I need to focus on what I am watching, and not on what I could be watching.
THE PLOT: A high school senior finds herself immersed in an online game of truth or dare, where her every move starts to become manipulated by an anonymous community of "watchers".
AFTER: See, it's another film set in high school, even if we never see these kids going to class, because all the action happens overnight, and they apparently never sleep. But I'm going to count this as part of the back-to-school chain anyway, because I can. These kids party all night and probably all weekend too, so they're probably a wreck in class on Monday morning, but hey, that's Staten Island for you - the only kids more wasted are probably the ones on the Jersey Shore.
This film's main character, Vee (short for Venus) wants to go to school at Cal Arts, but she's afraid to tell her mother that she was accepted there, because it hasn't been that long since her brother died, and she just doesn't have the self-confidence to bring up this topic, or to move across the country for school, for that matter. If only there were some kind of convenient online game that she could play that could help her confront her fears and also help her develop a sense of self-worth, while also earning some money for tuition, and maybe meeting a cute guy along the way. Ha ha, that's so silly, we shouldn't wish for things we can't have.
For this to work, you have to believe that there are two types of people in this world, players and watchers. Players are the people who take the online dares, while watchers are the people who, well, you can probably guess. I think this is really overly simplistic, to break down all of humanity into just two types, the doers and the watchers. Vee is a watcher at heart, but she's sick of being a follower, a hanger-on, a toady, so she pushes herself to become a doer, a player. We all have that power at any time, but we all can also use it selectively - I can be a doer at my job and get stuff done, and then I can go home and watch TV or a movie, I don't have to think of myself as just the one thing.
This film so wanted to land somewhere between "Ready Player One" and "The Hunger Games", only it's not set in the future, it's set in NYC, here and now. And maybe you might think this couldn't happen here and now, but you'd be wrong. We live in an amazing world of social media, where people are able to connect to each other in ways they never have before - but what do today's teen's use this incredible power for? Meet-ups like an annual pantsless subway ride, that's what. Not raising money to cure cancer or some other disease, it's more, hey, let's get together and take our pants off and make everyone else on the train really uncomfortable (and/or turned on) because they didn't get the text like the cool people did. Way to go, millennials, you're really lowering the bar.
And don't get me started on the various "challenges" that make the rounds. Let's start with the cinnamon challenge, which is impossible, the milk gallon challenge, which makes EVERYONE who tries it throw up. But you kids never learn, do you? Nobody on the internet who challenges you has your best interest at heart - so naturally that led to the Tide Pod challenge, where some mental midgets ended up EATING DETERGENT because someone on the internet told them to. You know that's poison, right? Any of you kids die from eating a Tide Pod, you probably deserve it, and we're just thinning out the gene pool, which was pretty shallow to begin with. The latest one is filming yourself dancing along with some music video while exiting a moving car. Do you really need me to say it? Geez, I thought my generation was dumb for cross-dressing in the 80's, playing "Seven Minutes in Heaven" and drinking Crystal Pepsi, but these kids today really found a way to act even stupider.
The ultimate, of course, are these numbskulls who climb up skyscrapers to the very tippy-top, just to get a selfie with the whole city skyline in the background. I'd say go ahead, climb wherever you want, fall to your death, you'd be doing the world a favor, except I don't want you to take out somebody else on the ground when you land. That person, at least, would not deserve to die. And I thought base-jumping was the ultimate stupid physical activity, but someone had to go and take it to the next level, didn't they? All for what, a couple cool Instagram shots? You know, you could probably create those skyscraper photos in Photoshop and not risk your life, I'm just saying. Your stupid classmates will never know.
But let's get back to the story seen in "Nerve", which starts out strong, but falls apart about halfway through. The online dares start out simple enough - kiss this random guy, try on this dress in a fancy department store (which is somehow open late at night, so I'm calling NITPICK POINT on that) but then get tougher, progressing to things like walking across a ladder between two buildings, or trying to grab a cop's gun (umm, not recommended) or jump from one subway platform to another. The makers of this film do know that teens were ideally going to watch this film, right? I think they just ended up giving today's kids a whole new bunch of idiotic dares to try out.
So the question that the filmmakers should have asked here was, "Should we make this movie, or are we just going to giving a bunch of new bad ideas to today's teens?" I don't feel that enough consideration was given to this point, because if it had been, this movie wouldn't exist. About the only thing that the film gets right is the fact that the makers of this hot, new internet game turn out to be much more interested in taking money OUT of the players' accounts than they are at putting money into them. Sure, go ahead, sync up your online banking account with your online poker account, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?
Look, I'm not saying that my generation wasn't full of dumb ideas, we certainly were. How many times did I read a story in the newspaper about some teen that ran up a five-figure bill on a phone sex line? And his parents would end up on the hook for all those charges - at that point they probably would have preferred him to have real sex with a real hooker, who would charge maybe $100 max, instead of owing tens of thousands to a phone company. (I bet the teen probably would have preferred the real thing, too...). Also, when I was a teen, people were always talking about backwards messages on record albums, that if you moved your turntable in the other direction, you could hear hidden messages from the band, or perhaps the Dark Lord himself. Now, some people had turntables that could rotate backwards, and some didn't, but we all tried anyway. Some of those kids grew up to be DJs, but some of us just ruined our parents' turntables. Now that I'm older, I see that the rumors were probably spread by Big Stereo (Sony, Pioneer, Aiwa) to maybe sell a few more units.
See, you always have to question where your information is coming from - some of us learned this lesson back in the day, while others got a big wake-up call when they realized that Facebook was using personal data to build consumer profiles and send them targeted ads. My reaction when the news broke was, "Uh, yeah, DUH, who didn't see that one coming?" I won't participate in any store club cards, not even at the grocery when getting the store card will get me cheaper orange juice. If I have to give up my phone number to get the savings, it's just not worth it. We were buying Christmas cards at Party City when the clerk asked for my phone number, so I said, "Well, I'm flattered, really, but my wife is RIGHT THERE, so I don't think that's appropriate." Then she said, "No, it's for the purchase." Oh, well, then you can NOT have my phone number, because you absolutely don't need my phone number for me to buy these greeting cards. Radio Shack used to pull the same crap when I tried to buy batteries.
Now, I don't believe all of the conspiracy theories out there, I don't wear a tinfoil hat and I don't think 9/11 was an inside job. But I do believe that companies want to track my purchases, and I'll do whatever I can to stay off their radar. The kids playing "Nerve" here really should have predicted there would be consequences for signing up, but hey, it's the younger generation, and they just aren't as savvy as some of us.
But the whole film still manages to fall completely apart in the second half. It feels like someone started the story and just couldn't think of a good way to end it, so they punted. And bear in mind the whole premise didn't make sense from the START. Think about it, if you were trying to work up the nerve to answer an acceptance letter from college, and you really wanted to go there, why on earth would you then spend a night doing activities that could get you into trouble, especially when all of those activities were being broadcast over the internet and through all of your social media? Didn't she think that the college's advisory board might check out the prospective candidates online? This just doesn't work as a story point.
I'm going to add one more NITPICK POINT, because there's just no way to get from Staten Island into Manhattan by motorcycle in just 15 minutes. That's across the Verrazano Bridge, through Brooklyn via the B.Q.E., and over another bridge into Manhattan? Nope. Not even on the best day at 3 am, with no traffic. Ain't gonna happen. But the whole film treats the distances traveled across NYC as if they don't even exist. Same goes for the Staten Island Ferry, it's not a short trip, it can take nearly half an hour.
Also starring Emma Roberts (last seen in "We're the Millers"), Emily Meade (last seen in "Money Monster"), Juliette Lewis (last seen in "Janis: Little Girl Blue"), Colson Baker (aka Machine Gun Kelly), Miles Heizer (last seen in "Roman J. Israel, Esq."), Kimiko Glenn, Samira Wiley (last seen in "The Sitter"), Ed Squires, Brian Marc, Eric D'Alessandro, Marc John Jefferies (last seen in "The 5th Wave"), Casey Neistat, Josh Ostrovsky (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), Jonny Beauchamp.
RATING: 3 out of 10 ski masks
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