Chat: A Sala Negra

Five troubled teenagers connect to the chatrooom "Chelsea Teens!" in Internet to meet each other and talk in a self-help group. When the depressive Jim decides to commit suicide, the destructive sociopath William lures and pushes him to the edge to force him to kill himself.

The storyline of "Chatroom" is intriguing since the author uses a physical room to depict the conversations of the teens as if they were happening in the real world.

Unfortunately this promising and interesting concept is the only good thing in this boring and shallow film. The execution with several subplots keeps going back and forth from Internet to the real world but they are unattractive and maybe indicated for teens. In the end, I was no longer paying attention to this annoying flick. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Chat - A Sala Negra" ("Chat - The Black Room")

Note: On 04 July 2023, I saw this film again, aware of the plot and of the dangers of social media (I do not have any social media, only a blog). This time, I found "Chatroom" better and better. My conclusion is that this film deserves to be seen at least twice. My vote is seven.

Before I set to record this film, that was shown on Film 4 last night, I presumed it'd be a trite U.S. comedy/horror, full of gross-out and stoned slackers.

How pleasantly surprised I was to find it to be a deep, unpredictable British psychological thriller that's high on design and imagination. Yes, the actors look like they've escaped off sets of U.K teen dramas such as Skins, but they are playing characters that that market already caters for.

It's quite neat how the protagonist, Aaron Johnson, (Will) is accessing the chat-room in question via his PC or smartphone but is also then seen within it. As we soon get to know, Will's psychological make-up and difficulties are complex and largely unexplained. Is the chat-room itself purely in his mind and is the labyrinth of other rooms that we see at the start also only in his imagination? If so, that's quite a neat way of adding extra texture and substance that's already there.

The challenging soundscapes and things like the animations add extra meat to the body of expression that director Hideo Nakata uses - and I personally liked them and thought they added to the film. Some of the discussions on serious emotional conditions and suicide may help those who are exposed to those feelings and experiences, or they may not - depending on how mentally well one is. But at least it raises them, which is quite brave.

I don't necessarily think that the "hammy" acting that many have criticised is out of place here - touching and nuanced performances would be out of place in this aggressively symbolic and stylised movie. And, when one types on Facebook, with modern, abbreviated cyber-speak and even more so with Twitter, then dialogue is even more stilted, with even less room for delicate expression.

The other characters add to the mixture of messed-up heads and some social comment on what is acceptable and what isn't gets some interesting airing. I think many viewers who've come back from the pub and expected a simple cat and mouse cyber-bullying flick may have well been unprepared for how deep and complex this thriller is and been put off by that. It's a brave and imaginative film; flawed, yes. A nice bonus for those of us who've visited the locations such as Camden Lock and London Zoo are indeed, the familiar locations.

The concept of Chatroom is a really good idea: five teenagers join an online chatroom and the film portrays their conversations as if they are happening in the real world, in a physical room. I can see, with quite a bit of rewriting, this working as a very engaging stage adaption. However, this film doesn't deliver on the goods. If I could make some decisions here I would have kept the entire film surrealistic, keeping every scene in the virtual world instead of flashing back and forth from the online fantasy into the real world where the kids are typing into their laptops or phones. That would have taken quite a bit of more talent to write, however, as we'd have to stay engaged with a conversation in a My Dinner With Andre sort of way. Also, two of the characters are extremely neglected and their subplots are never carried through to fruition. I also have a hard time believing, even in the virtual world of the internet, that the villain here could actually manipulate everyone so easily without anyone really objecting. It would have been in that objection, in the passion of that debate, that this movie could have found its true energy. But unfortunately it relies too heavily on every parent's paranoid nightmare of the internet leading to suicide or a sexual predator. There are some novel ideas here but unfortunately this film does not realize the potential of those ideas.

It's a rather odd movie, this Chatroom. Most of the story (not all) takes part in cyberspace, which is visualized in an interesting way. The chatroom is not shown through a computer screen with typed text, but as a real room where our characters meet. This gives this movie quite a strange feel, theatrical at points, but it is quite effective.

Will is the guy behind the chatroom. It all starts out fairly innocent but slowly we get drawn into his real intentions. The people who come in his chatroom all have their own issues. They are lonely in real life, traumatized or misunderstood, and in the chatroom they find people who they can tell their stories to. At first this seems to have a healing effect, but slowly we see that all is not what it seems to be.

What this movie shows, IMO, is the loneliness many people face, and also the dangers of using internet for our main communication. Like Will's mum tells him at one point; 'You can not help yourself if you are only talking to strangers. You need to communicate with us.' The plot is not too difficult to figure out and quite predictable, but it's worked out reasonably well and for me, the movie just got under my skin. There is no winner in this movie. I would not name this to be a thriller, but more a psychological drama. The feeling I am most left with is sadness.

Though this movie doesn't come close to the strength Hideo Nakata's 'Ringu' or 'Dark Water' have, and has a whole different feel to it, I do consider it worth watching.

In a year that served us with the Social Network and Inception we have a piece in the way of Chatroom (2010) that as strange as it may seem manages to drop between the weightier concepts of its two more esteemed colleagues. Nolan's world is the looser comparison but whereas dream and dream space are used as an extension of the psyche, Director Hideo Nakata attempts a physical representation of the Internet chat room, caught somewhere between abstract fantasy and an extension of ones persona in a domain that allows endless creative freedom for it.

Whilst you will not find any reference to Facebook directly, there is clear comparison to the Social Networks look into the effect of the internet on younger generations and their communicative dependence on it. The insight however comes from a different angle as we see consequence- Ostracism, broken parental relationships and obsession. Thematically we are in a darker world of Paedophilia, Suicide, Self harm and so on, our Subjects are teen caricatures Aaron Johnson (Kick Ass) plays the lead as William a seemingly causeless rebel and leader of the group which includes posh girl Eva (Imogen Poots), loner Jim (Matthew Beard), geek Emily (Hannah Murray) and self doubting Mo (Daniel Kaluuya).

When it comes to the execution Chatroom suffers from an overdose of its own ideas, all of which never materialise into anything remotely as interesting as the abundant pretences. For example there are two occasions where the film breaks out stop motion animation sequences in a naive attempt to deliver some parts of the narrative. Naïve is also an apt way to describe the cast whose performance is little more than comprehensive school drama club standard, coupled with a script which paints it's characters as vaguely existential. Nakata must take some of the blame also, the film is horrifically paced and even the 90 minute run time feels like a slog, lack of discipline is his ultimate flaw here multiple ideas without substance are no match for substantial development of a single idea.