Chatroom.

My sister has had a lot of films she has wanted me to explore and review but most of them I either already have in my watch list somewhere or I'm not particularly interested. Most of the films I had lined up were revisits but after how awful the Shaun of the Dead review turned out I decided to give one of the films she asked me to watch and review a go. So enjoy, especially you Molly!

So going into Chatroom it's hard not to be interested, it's topical - about teenage use of the internet although I'm not sure why they chose a chatroom, I know not many people use them now and I'm honestly not sure many people used them in 2010 but I guess 'The Social Network' was already being made... Chatroom is directed by the guy who did such things as the Japanese Original Ring and Dark Water, two great movies. Plus it's a British movie, we all love British Cinema, right guys?!

I wont go as far as to say this film is confusing but lots happens with very little explanation. Nakata seems to think implying things is enough and I don't. I'm not writing this film myself, at least give me more to go on than making random stabs in the dark at what is going on. Very little becomes clear or even gets resolved by the end either. I don't need you to spell it out for me but you can keep an air of mystery and leave it open to interpretation without leaving us with no details at all. This film really isn't made for those with little patience.

Chatroom is about teenagers talking in a chatroom that is represented by teenagers physically sat around talking in a room and leaves it open to whether this is simply a metaphorical representation or it is meant to be real and tangible in the films diegesis, I can't work out if this is genius or daft. It eventually unfurls that each teenager that has ended up in this Room is all in their own way, pretty damn messed up as they form a friendship through the chatroom. And the film seems to get darker and darker with each passing minute. And things start to get seriously fucked up, very quickly as William begins to ruin four very messed up teens lives.

There are a lot of extremely interesting concepts, like each user on the chatroom has their own room which makes up their personality, much like say a Tumblr account or to a lesser extent a Facebook profile it's just a shame this seems to be used for a novelty sequence and isn't explored further. Or the 'Suicide Room' where William leads people to commit suicide seemingly for his own sick pleasure. Or the hacking sequence and that is to name but a few.

All in all it's an extremely surreal and deeply unsettling little movie that is somewhere between a psychological thriller, a horror movie and a sci-fi film. I love how you can never quite tell where reality starts and ends even if I think the movie is perhaps a little too heavy a negative critique on our modern, social network driven lives.

Whether genius or madness, this is an extremely beautiful film. Sure there is a fair amount of pretentious artyfartyness but hey, making the internet world a physical one in some unclear sense and mixing it with claymation? I ain't arguing. It tackles many concepts, the lack of privacy on the internet, trolls, internet predators and the fact that on the internet, you can be anything. And it does it always in extremely interesting and beautiful ways.

Although it is by no means an allstar cast, it's still a good, solid British one with the likes of Imogen Poots, Hannah Murray, Richard Madden, Megan Dodds and Daniel Kaluuya to name a few. However it doesn't really show considering just how weird the acting is. Everyone delivers their lines really awkwardly and whimsically in the 'chat world' but I really don't get the purpose, is this meant to represent how online people speak? Because I fail to see how, a better representation would be the characters saying 'SMILEY FACE' and 'LOL' between every sentence, although I guess that wouldn't make a very good movie... And I mean the guy who plays William, he sure loves to ham it up and overact as much as he can, he was so good in Kick-Ass but he is awful in this.

So do I recommend this? Chatroom is a bloody brilliant film, there is no denying that but it isn't without its issues. It isn't until the somewhat ridiculous ending when all the characters meet in real life to stop Jim killing himself that you realise that despite being in this film for an hour and a half, you really know nothing or really care very little about any of these characters and William's motivations are pretty unclear. Now I'm not a guy who needs a movie spelt out to him, but when he has to spell the entire movie out himself then I think we are going to far in the other direction. So I'd still recommend this to everyone, but you may have to divulge into the concepts more than the concrete.

Think About It!

-Locke