Director: Jennifer Harrington
Year: 2021
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Suspense/Thriller
Plot:
Staying home to babysit a friends' dog, a social media influencer finds that one of her charges is intent on playing a deadly game with her forcing her to answer a series of puzzles and games in order to save her friends from the mysterious killer before they're all eventually killed off.
Review:
This was a really problematic genre effort. Among the only times that work for this one is the on-spot commentary on the social media influencer culture and their need for false personas online versus their fractured reality. Seeing this group of friends spend their lives worrying about followers, keeping up appearances so that their latest post is marketable and chasing the next viral hit for their site so that they can grow their online empire speaks quite true to the lives of so many people in the modern online world. The entire setup of gearing the film towards a potential live stream event that gets interrupted because of her outside activities comes off quite believable here, especially when compared to the general setup of attempting to do the honorable thing in looking after her sisters' dog, while in the midst of a city-wide search for a serial killer murdering said animals, to mend fences while she goes for treatment on a medical emergency that befalls her. Seeing this turn into a sort of backstabbing and betrayal on her part due to the group only wanting her for the increase in their own social media lives, which is about all that this one has going for it.
There are several problems here, none bigger than the utterly unworthwhile and unimpressive group of friends we're supposed to care about here. The epitome of self-centered, egocentric entitled millennials who spend their entire lives on their phones plotting their next move, vapidly engaging in their own plots to gain celebration online and being so callous and uncaring at the personal tragedy of their friends' lives if it inconveniences their own plans that its impossible to even remotely care about any of them. Their treatment towards their friends makes it a slough through the first half of this one with their utterly unremarkable lives that the emergence of a prank at their behest finally puts the whole thing to rest when it comes to caring about them as a whole. The ludicrousness of the plot twists throughout the rest of the film, from who's alive or dead to the point of reveal about the killer and their motive to the actions undertaken in the cat-and-mouse chasing also makes it hard to follow the film for what's going on here or really enjoy the twists undertaken here. These elements really bring this one down for the most part.
Overview: *.5/5
Full of vacuous people that aren't interesting or worth being around, a series of plot-twists that make no sense and some minor positives that aren't of much importance, for the most part, there isn't a lot to like here beyond the surface gloss. Give it a chance if you're a fan of these kinds of thrillers or more of a modern-era genre fan, but most others won't find this one all that enjoyable anyway.
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