Nerve

Dir: Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost

2016

**

Jeanne Ryan wrote a fascinating book in 2012 (described as a young-adult techno-thriller - whatever the hell that is?) that explored a very feasible idea regarding the darker side of the internet. It's not incredibly original though, as My Little Eye pretty much had the same idea in 2002 and there are strong similarities to David Fincher's The Game. Nerve is a game, one where you can either be a player or a watcher. After a few scenes of poorly constructed character development and a convoluted story set-up, an unlikely girl called Vee decides to become a player, to prove herself to her friends. She is then given a string of dares by watchers for large sums of money, all of whom are anonymous. No one knows who has set up the website and it's almost impossible to be shut down because the people who created it are better at computers than you. The film relies heavily on people's misunderstandings of how computers work and what you can do with them. Vee is soon joined by another player and the two of them begin a night of highly dangerous tasks with huge consequences. The story becomes incredibly convoluted that the glimmer of intelligence the story once had is all but wiped out. The original novel was very different and Jessica Sharzer's re-writes pretty much destroy everything that was clever about it. Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost (of Catfish fame) were then hired, presumably because they are thought to be experts in the dark side of the web, although I would argue that they are actually part of that darkness. The directors stated that they wanted to make the film assessable to youngsters, because it would act as a valuable lesson to them, so they took out the most important part of the story so that it would obtain a PG-13 rating. The scene in question involves a sex act the two main character find themselves pressured into, surly a valuable lesson for all youngsters surfing the web these day, more so than doing pull-ups at the top of huge building cranes I would imagine. The film suggests that internet voyeurs are almost like a secret society that would gladly pay to see someone kill themselves live on YouTube. Now I'm not suggesting that there isn't a dark side to the web, there really is, so why not show it for what it is, rather than a ridiculous version of what it isn't? It could have been just as entertaining and it would have meant something. The film's big finale sees the film get even more ridiculous where a secret meeting takes place, in a huge arena, right next to the Hudson River, for the whole of New York to see, in the least secret way possible with loud music and flashing lights. The film has some nice graphics and I liked a lot of the filming techniques but the story is beyond dire. It's made worse by the fact that there is a really good idea in there somewhere, desperate to get out. The actions of the stereotype cardboard cut-out supporting characters and how they learn nothing from the story's lesson, just shows just how pointless the film is and how woefully wrong they got it. It contains all of the worst aspects of the internet without criticizing them, missing the point every step of the way. It's like a murderer explaining to a judge that he couldn't have been the killer because he was elsewhere at the time killing someone else. The whole thing gave me a headache and made me worry about the youth of today and the people my age poisoning their minds.