Film Review: Catfish

Facebook is a weird place. Everything about it is kind of off putting for me. Smug cretins boasting how great they are, and backing up their boasts with photos. People you work with posting inane drivel about their jobs when it's the last thing you want to look at when you've been there all week, people inviting you to terrible looking games, normally involving farms, the mafia, or both.

But, for reasons passing understanding I stay on there. It does have it's advantages, you can keep in touch with people (as long as they can be bothered to reply), it's a good place to have your photos collected together (because it's not as if everyone is going to run out and join Flickr or Tumblr) and, like Twitter, it's a good place for me to loudly voice my outspoken opinions about pretty much everything.

Catfish is the sort of film that will make even the most crazily optimistic Facebook user a bit weary. Without giving too much away, it's almost a cautionary tale about putting too much trust into Facebook (or any social networking site, to be honest)

When Nev Schulman starts communicating on Facebook with a young girl, who had sent him several paintings of his photography work, Nev's brother Ariel and fellow filmmaker Henry Joost think it has the makings of an interesting documentary. As time passes, Nev becomes friends with the girls entire family, regularly calling or emailing (they live in Michigan, Nev in New York) and Nev starts to talk to older sister Megan a lot, and a relationship starts to form between them.

But after a few months cracks begin to appear, and Nev finds out that Megan and the rest of her family are not quite what they seem...

Even with that description, I feel I have given too much away. It's another one of those reviews where it's hard to tell the reader what the film is about without giving the game away. Trust me, you will not believe what happens.

A lot of people are inclined to believe Catfish is faked. In fact 'Super Size Me' director Morgan Spurlock saw the film at an early test screening and congratulated the filmmakers for making the "best fake documentary I've ever seen", but despite a minor niggle here and there (like, a documentary about a little girl that sends someone paintings, to my mind isn't the best subject you could pick) I think it's all true.

Why? It's crazy enough to be. And there are elements, or characters in the film (it's not a spoiler to say this to people who have seen it: the twins, for example), you wouldn't throw that in there as a "little extra" to make things seem more strange. But yeah, again without saying too much I believe it's all true.

But even if it wasn't, it would be an amazing film. At times its as tense as any thriller as you start to discover the truth. I was actually talking to myself, asking "What the hell is going on?" at several points throughout the movie.

If I had one complaint against it (and I can't elaborate on this much for spoiler reasons) it gets a little too exploitative for my tastes near the end, there is no real need for it, but at the same time I can understand why they are doing it.

****

Get's a little harsh for reasons you will see for yourself near the end, but this is funny, touching, tragic and bat shit CRAZY documentary. And for that last reason, it HAS to be true.