Catfish

Catfish directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Shulman, although can be suspenseful can be at times can be a bit predictable. The movie first starts off with Ariel Shulman recording the life of his brother Yaniv Shulman (Nev). As they film his life they see that he has an interest in a little girl with painting talent. He quickly become close to her and her older sister named Megan Faccio. As the days go by, Nev finds himself falling for his Internet crush. He falls so hard that they exchange text, messages online and phone calls everyday, but the closer they get the more truth he finds out about his beloved Megan. His suspicions grew and grew until he convinces his bother Ariel and his crew to find out the truth about Megan. As they get closer and closer to Megan, the lies start to unravel themselves. In the end, you see that what you see is not really what you get.

            Catfish is not the best or the worst movie to come this year.  It was like watching a game of cat and mouse, yet the at times the cat and mouse would get tired and stall for a couple of minutes. The movie had a lot of dull moments where it could have done with out. The editing should have cut these scenes or part of scenes where it did not help advance the story. It also gave it a very armature look to it where it tried look like a “horror” film at time. I did not think it was necessary to have such shaky scenes and “Hitchcock” angles. It felt like it was the next “wanna” be Blair Witch Project with those camera angles and useless scenes.  Also after seeing the first clue of that Megan wasn’t who she really was, I instantly knew who it was in the end.  After that everything was pretty much predictable of what was going to happen next.

            Although it lacked some things, it still did a good job regaining my attention and emotions. What I did like was that Ariel and Henry tried to capture the emotions of the real Megan.  I actually felt moved and sorry for the person behind everything. The close up to their faces showed each person’s emotions and lets you into their world for just a second. I thought it was a great idea to show what happened afterwards and not left the audience wondering what happened after all that had happened.

            This film was entertaining and captivation even though it was a bit too much and too little at times. It makes you think about what the Internet can do our society today and how easy it is to lie and manipulate people through it. Remember; never trust a stranger, not even on the Internet.