The whole social networking scene is fresh and interesting territory that will probably be explored more in film. Millions of people use sites such as Facebook or Myspace everyday to share their thoughts with the world. The possibilities are endless. Of all those possible premises, "Catfish" has to be one of the most fascinating and shocking.
It's mainly about the potential dangers attributed with social networking. Someone you may know only on Facebook may not be who they say they are.
"Catfish" keeps you guessing from the beginning to the end and the best part about it is that it's real-well, maybe. I suppose that in this age of shaky-cam mockumenataries it could have been faked or slightly dramatized. Whatever you choose to believe, see "The Blair Witch Project," "Catfish" still works as a realistic thriller.
In 2007 directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost decided to make a film profiling Ariel's brother, Nev, and his adventures on Facebook. Nev, who is a photographer, is amiable and caring, but gullible. He has recently begun a friendship with an eight-year-old girl named Abbey in Michigan, who sends him a professional looking painting of one of his photos.
Eventually, on Facebook, he befriends her entire family, including her mom Angela, her father Vince, her brother Alex, and her older sister Megan. As the weeks go on Nev starts to have a "more than friends" relationship with Meg.
This first half of the movie is interesting all by itself. It consisted of scenes where the camera is put right up to Nev's computer screen, showing his back- and-forths with the family members. That and scenes using the usual reality show style of filming.
You are only seeing the friendship from Nev's point of view. The only things you know about these people are what Nev tells us or is shown on their Facebook pages. So you go along with it but thinking in the back of your head, is there something else to this?
Pretty soon trouble arrives when Meg sends Nev songs that she has supposedly sung and recorded, but the three friends discover that the recordings were taken from You Tube. So they embark on a journey to Michigan to find out the truth. That's where the Hitchcockian conflict begins to unravel.
The minute the three land in Chicago and head off to the family's home you won't want to take your eyes off the screen. Unbelievable truths are revealed, one after another, to the point where your head is spinning. You're like a fish that's taken the bait.
The movie clocks in at 86 minutes, which is the perfect amount of time for its juicy story to unfold. Any longer and the film would have worn itself out.[[In-content Ad]]
