Surprise is a rare thing in the online movies in the Internet age. So, far be it for me to spoil the one at the heart of “Catfish,” an indie documentary that’s being promoted as a sort of “Blair Witch”-style thriller — maybe without the witch.
Seriously, the trailers and ads for thisDiscount Pandora Jewellery Sundance darling would have you think there are shocks, jolts and moments where characters fear for their lives. That’s a come-on, and if you go in expecting that, you’ll be disappointed. But what New York filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost have cut together is a mildly suspenseful documentary, a game of Facebook Liar’s Poker that amounts to a cautionary tale for the “no privacy” generation.
Schulman’s younger brother, Yaniv, strikes up a friendship with a kid who is sending him colorful paintings based on his photographs. The painter, Abby, is 8 years old and has talent. They exchange e-mails. Yaniv (he goes by “Nev”) is just a young professional being nice to Pandora Jewelryand encouraging a fellow artist, a child living in a remote corner of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Nev chats online with Abby’s mom. Then he Facebook “friends” Abby’s hot-teenage sister, Megan, and things get complicated.
Using everything from Google Earth to Mapquest and YouTube, the film’s graphics capture this budding romance, showing us how much Nev’s life and Megan’s can be detailed, illustrated and investigated from the comfort of your laptop. It’s a chilling lesson in how much Pandorais out there about you, most of it stuff you have revealed about yourself, especially if you’re in an online social network or two.
The filmmakers, with Nev’s often reluctant participation, capture his growing fascination and the doubts that creep into his thinking. And they film (in various grades of shaky video) a how-to primer for anybody seeking to check out what some stranger is telling you about him or herself. They also do a decent job of maintaining suspense, leading the viewer to expect some touch of Hollywood melodrama.
But nobody who has read the decades of stories about chat room trickery, Authentic Pandora Jewelryor seen a certain Armistead Maupin true story film adaptation (starring the fellow who used to share the small screen with “Mindy”) will be dazzled by this film’s “surprise twist.”
Still, that total change in tone in the final act is gripping and effective even if we see it coming a mile off.
