Friday Night Sext Scandal

I was hoping this Lifetime movie regarding high school kids searching for popularity might be a bit more entertaining, as are a few older Lifetime movies that star Tori Spelling and other less well known actresses. This movie really didn't have any characters that most audiences would want to route for. It just lacked so much in terms of the character development.

On top of the story without any truly endearing characters, there is a strange unexplained part of this movie that I don't understand. I guess it might have been talked about during the few minutes when I went to grab a snack, but I doubt it. There is the hint that someone might be deaf, as there are extended moments of characters talking but we hear no dialogue. The camera pans in on their face some of the time, and some of that time is specifically focused on the speaker's lips while we hear no conversation, but other times the camera seems focused on random areas near the person who seems to be talking, but we don't hear. There are so many instances of this lip reading and/or no audible dialogue that it seems as though someone is going to be revealed as being deaf, or having a history of deafness, but I never found an explanation for this.

In addition, there is an annoying bell that rings every few seconds in the background of this movie. It sounds like the bell that informs you of a text and I had to mute the TV just to ensure this bell was coming from the TV and not my iPhone.

I wouldn't recommend this movie. I finished it only because I wanted to know if they'd finally tell us if someone was deaf or explain why they were filming all the inaudible dialogue. That question was never answered for me.

Even though the high school culture in this movie is not something I'm familiar with as someone not from the West, I've seen how it works through various movies. But the other side of it, the scandal aspect is something I've heard has happened even here. And you always get so surprised and disgusted with how it happens and not only that but how this many people can be involved with such acts. I thought this movie made a somewhat good depiction of how even the most unassuming people can turn into that. Although, if I wasn't familiar with American teenage movies and how the relationships work in such movies, I wouldn't have been able to think there was any truth in how things turned out in this. So, this felt real only because of my exposure to other movies, which could be totally wrong. The movie was still trying to make the main character more sympathetic than necessary by including a lot of things that are just in bad faith. The acting was really good overall and there were some things that worked very well but it also had a limited focus on what to tell which didn't really make it really good.

Another thing that this movie really made me think of is how especially these kinds of stories are undermined by having older actors. This movie could have had no explicit scenes at all and made the actors actually look like teenagers and the impact would've been huge. The horror and disgust would really bring out the point even if nothing explicit is shown. The fact that it shows a bit with the actors who are obviously older really negates a lot of impact and also makes the crime look lesser. The audience should understand that these are kids and not grown people which is a fact all the movies constantly try to erase. I really didn't think about it before that much but this movie kind of made me understand why that is important.

This TV movie covers the happenings in senior schools to a certain extent, but it is much worse than this film projects. It is not a matter of hunting, but privately sharing pictures between boys and girls. If a boy likes a certain girl, he will send a nakied picture of himself and if the girl likes him too, she will send a picture of herself in return. It is a most harmful practise and is the result of social media that this sexting occurs. In the olden days people approached and chattted and chaffed each other and relationships arose in this more harmless manner. It is important that parents bring up their children to these current social media and dangerous happenings, because once a picture is on the internet it will stay there forever and may cause sorrow and worse, many years down the line.