I will admit upfront, this film left a really horrible taste in my mouth.
So much so that it even soured my feelings towards Nerdist and Chris Hardwick.
I know his M.O. is to be very positive about everything, and upbeat. But this movie just wasn't good.
If you are giving it a HUGE pass because it is low-budget, maybe you could forgive it some of its mistakes.
I was ready to walk out after 10 minutes because of a sound design element that was quite literally painful. From Bravest Warriors: "It's like making Oatmeal cry..." Catbug:"Why would you do that?" Why would you hurt your audience? That is lazy filmmaking.
All of the characters were unlikeable bullies. I rooted for no one and wanted them all to die.
The visual design was for stylistic purposes and actually violated filmic grammar in ways I just could not forgive.
Blacklight? Why? Totally non-diegetic, which is fine, but could not forgive it especially compared to other issues.
Oh, let me do First Person POV shots as Over-The-Shoulder shots, SOMETIMES. Why? I'm confused.
Let me have blinking lights/strobe effect FOR NO REASON, other than to make the shot painful to look at. Thanks.
The love story didn't really work for me either. There was ONE SCENE where it was almost poignant (the one with the strobe lights), but I didn't even want to watch it because the cinematography was so annoying.
Nor did I find the gore effects particularly interesting either.
I didn't like the movie. I didn't enjoy watching it. I didn't like the score (which was also a major selling point of the film).
It was all over the place. And there there was weird unnecessarily sexualized slut-shaming/emasculation dialogue that I also did not like at all.
The whole big social networking allegory was also not very strong or sold well in the movie itself. You get that more from reading critique on it than what you can actually see in the film text itself.
Maybe I am too old.
I love genre movies. I love the surprise little indies.
But I was sitting in my seat fuming, just waiting for it to end. I felt lied to by the Nerdist stamp of approval.
To me it is totally skippable. Unless you are OK with starting a movie that it is OK to shut off before you finish.
