Social media won’t go
away, at least not anytime soon. It’s
here to stay and as such will likely remain an ongoing target of cinematic
critiques (or rebukes depending on your point of view) for years to come. Films like Unfriended and of course The
Social Network turned the spotlight on how harmful the technology can be
for so many people. The latest addition
to the social-media subgenre of suspense driven thrillers is Nerve, an overtly Nicolas Winding Refn
inspired neon drenched tween thriller about an internet based truth-or-dare game
divided between players willing to take on the dares enacted by the
watchers.
Starring Emma Roberts as Vee, a high school senior who reluctantly agrees to participate in the game after intense pressure from her in-crowd peers and Dave Franco as Ian, her unlikely partner in crime, Nerve joins co-directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost’s Catfish as a sharp critique of internet culture and the thrill seeking validation we crave from online popularity. As such, it’s a standard genre thriller which doesn’t quite go the distance an R rated thriller dealing with the same subject would have and it doesn’t really add or subtract from preconceptions people already have about online communication’s impact on teenagers. But it manages to include some GoPro driven suspense in parts when it isn’t painting the canvas with bright neon fluorescent colors ala Drive or Only God Forgives. Even the poster looks just like Only God Forgives which is what attracted me to the picture in the first place.
Starring Emma Roberts as Vee, a high school senior who reluctantly agrees to participate in the game after intense pressure from her in-crowd peers and Dave Franco as Ian, her unlikely partner in crime, Nerve joins co-directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost’s Catfish as a sharp critique of internet culture and the thrill seeking validation we crave from online popularity. As such, it’s a standard genre thriller which doesn’t quite go the distance an R rated thriller dealing with the same subject would have and it doesn’t really add or subtract from preconceptions people already have about online communication’s impact on teenagers. But it manages to include some GoPro driven suspense in parts when it isn’t painting the canvas with bright neon fluorescent colors ala Drive or Only God Forgives. Even the poster looks just like Only God Forgives which is what attracted me to the picture in the first place.
Being a social media
movie, Nerve can’t help but utilize
nearly all the same online communication tools placed in the forefront that Unfriended did, replete with emoticons
and texts-in-picture conversations ala Fifty
Shades of Grey and The Shallows. It’s a little clichéd but the actors sell it
well and manage to imbue their characters with more complexity than some of the
other social media movies floating out there.
Emma Roberts and Dave Franco have undeniable onscreen chemistry and the
ever great Juliette Lewis provides a solid supporting role as Nancy, a caring
maternal nurse who wants the best for her daughter while overcoming her own
personal tragedy. It’s always nice still
seeing the fierce actress turned rock star still working in film although I
have to wonder if we’ll ever see anything as electrifying as Mallory Knox in Natural Born Killers ever again. Visually the movie starts out looking like a
standard tween thriller but as the increasingly dangerous truth-or-dare game
gains momentum it starts to flood the screen with glistening neon lights with
some sequences edited at a frenetic pace.
The soundtrack mostly consists of teen pop hits but the original score
by Rob Simonsen does a fair job emulating Cliff Martinez. Nerve wears
its influences on its sleeve but I found myself not minding the derivation on
display.
If I had any complaints
to make about what is essentially a two hour time killer with occasional
suspense and nail biting thrills, it’s that without spoiling anything it tends
to end on a whimper. For such a strong
and sustained buildup towards what should be a towering climax, it takes an
easier way out than a more confident thriller would have. Being a staunch filmgoer who prefers their
cinema to be a little more uncompromising and polarizing than the rest, I can’t
help but be somewhat disappointed Nerve had
such fever pitch intensity in the first two acts for such a weak finale. That said, I enjoyed Nerve for the most part and identified with the film’s overall
contempt for social media addiction. Its
heart is in the right place and it has something to say for teenage viewers who
made up most of the audience at the screening I attended. In our cultural era of social media addiction
and obsession, Nerve has a thing or
two teenagers can take from the film that will make them think twice about how
much of themselves they’re investing in the online inner-space. It could have been stronger and taken more
risks but wasn’t totally without merit or entertainment value. You could do far worse on a Saturday
afternoon.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki