Control. Alter. Delete. : A Review of Chatroom (2010)

“The internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.” – Eric Schmidt (Executive Chairman of Google)

                   Award winning director Hideo Nakata creates a visual experience with his film, Chatroom. New to Netflix, this British thriller explores the world of online chatrooms and the young people who frequent them. The set up revolves around William (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) a teenager who creates a chatroom in order to make some online friends. The film implores the use of masterful editing to cast the world of online chatrooms in a physical light. The story opens with William logging on to his computer and beginning to set up the chatroom, this image is followed by William wondering down a corridor filled with doors. These doors are quickly revealed to be chatrooms, this corridor the Internet. Using this set up the filmmakers are able to show a highly impersonal world in an intimate way.


              Award winning writer, Enda Walsh, who first created the story for the stage, adapted Chatroom for the screen. He uses the story to highlight the danger of finding friendship in an online world. With each character Walsh explores the generation gap between the technologically savvy and their parents. The story follows five teenagers with very different backgrounds and personalities who all share a common loneliness. Their isolation drives all five teens to join the chatroom to find online friends and companionship they lack in their everyday lives. Like many young people today, the characters find solice in online strangers, opening up to them without knowing what kind of people they are. Once the bonds of friendship are created, William begins to “play” with some of the members, getting these lonely people to open up to a complete stranger, the consequences of which are sinister.

The reason I found Chatroom to be so incredible is the way the writing lends itself to the performers. The cast, lead by British actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is a wonderful combination of fantastic young actors. Each is challenged with creating their character in the real world, and their slightly more animated counterpart for the online world. The set up allows these performers to be both deeply intimate and coldly distant all at the same time. For example, one of my favorite scenes (which I promise gives away nothing) is between William and his online friend Eva, played by Imogen Poots. The two have sparked a flirtation, which in the physical world is depicted as the two sitting coldly, separated by the length of a city, at their computers. The scene is spliced between this physical world, and the Internet world of their chatroom. Though the actors barely make eye contact the intimacy of the scene is tangible. Both the writing and the amazing young performers create a startling tale of real world isolation and online world intimacy.

My recommendation is to absolutely check this movie out. It is definitely too dark for a family film and may not be appreciated by those younger than 17. The story, the characters, the beautiful imagery all work together seamlessly together to create a thrilling tale about the darkness of the Internet. Check the trailer out at below and the full movie on Netflix.

Oldies But Goodies

In this segment each week I will recommend three movies on topic with the movie reviewed.


This weeks Oldies but Goodies are...

1. Disturbing Behavior (1998)
2. Hard Candy (2005)
3. Cruel Intentions (1999)

Name That Movie

Name the movie depicted below! Make your guesses in the comments section and the first person to guess correctly will be published as this weeks Name That Movie Winner!

Ask a Film Student Question of the Week: What is a grip?

         Wikipedia defines a grip as “lighting and rigging technicians in the filmmaking and video production industries.” Grips can perform a variety of jobs dealing with the set up of camera functions, such as setting up tracks. Grips can also be primarily focused on helping with the lighting set ups for any particular shot. To read more on the function of a grip check out Wikipedia’s full article here.

        Post your questions in the comments below and yours could be featured on next weeks addition of “Ask a Film Student.”