Chatroom

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.

Horrible teens somehow get sucked in to doing horrible things by a floppy haired sulky cliché of the spoilt upper crust.

Past the original idea of portraying internet chat rooms as a physical space this movie has nothing new to offer. Every character is so one dimensional it's a joke. You have sulky emo kid angry at the world. The conservative political girl, the shy geek and the posh totty who hates being posh. This plays out more like a poorly written teen novel than a movie. I thought the manipulation of the other teens by the angry Emo was far too simple. Within one conversation he has the conservative character smearing feces all over her parents car.

I found it hard to relate to any of the characters because they had no depth. None of them felt real to me. I just hated them all. The only reason I kept watching was in the hope I'd see them all get their comeuppance.

The film is very nice to look at with some quite clever visual ideas for some of the chat rooms. Also the stop motion sections were quite a nice break from the whiny teens.

In the end all this movie really ended up being was a very heavy handed message of 'be careful who you talk to on the internet'. I just wanted to be entertained and not spoken to like a child.

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.

Chatroom is a disturbing film about a young man named Will (Aaron Johnson from Kickass) who sets up a chat room called "Chelsea Teens!". Four other teenagers join this site and soon they begin exchanging information as though they where life long friends. The chat room is brilliantly shown in physical form and the "friends" effortlessly jump from real life to the chat room which is portrayed as a sleazy run down hotel where all chatrooms are represented by different rooms.

The film is stylishly shot and hats off to director Hideo Nakata for doing something bold and different. The film is most certainly not one to let the younger teens sneak into as they may be drawn by the young skilled cast; the film is a visceral work and will play with your mind. The main topic here is isolation, all these kids have problems and the forlorn Will manipulates them via the chat room. He gets into their heads and influences their lives with devastating effects.

All in all this is a good film, very well shot and well acted Imogen Poots who plays Eva in the film is simply divine and a name we will hear a lot more about.Go into this film knowing as little as possible about it and have an open mind it will pull at the strings in your head and it unearths a dark world that is out there.

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.