Nerve

Year: 2016
Genre: Thriller
Directed: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Stars: Emma Roberts, Dave Franco, Emily Meade, Miles Heizer, Kimiko Glenn, Marc John Jefferies, Machine Gun Kelly, Brian 'Sene' Marc, Ed Squires, Rightor Doyle, Josh Ostrovsky, Eric D'Alessandro
Production: Lionsgate

When I saw the climax of Nerve; a masked mass of sycophants dimly lit by the light of their phones, I saw what Siegfried Kracauer might have seen in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920); a denial of tradition mixed with "...faith in man's power to shape society and nature." I saw the prurient fecklessness of reality TV being weaponized, the desensitized and fragmented youth culture being co-opted and the fears of technology being fiendishly well justified. In other words, I saw the end.

This bulls**t actually sounds familiar...

The film has a deceptively clever little setup; Vee (Roberts) a goody-goody living on Staten Island is coaxed into an online truth or dare game, only without the truth. Those involved are either Watchers or Players. The much larger Watcher community decides which dare/stunt the Player group is to accomplish and each accomplished dare wins you money. Those who "bail" or "fail" lose all their winnings and lose a chance at the finals. There's a third group which is strongly implied in the trailer but I won't spoil for the sake of those who actually want to watch this harbinger of the end of the republic. After all, snitches apparently get stitches.

Objectively speaking this film is okay. The story from a structural point of view is serviceable and the characterizations are bullet-pointed but never fully fleshed out. There are some neat visuals made real by luscious primary colors then sabotaged by ugly staging and distracting ADHD inspired graphics. Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman may have been channeling Nicolas Winding Refn or Rick Famuyiwa's work in Dope (2015) but they really only succeed in reaching the sophistication of Untraceable (2008) drenched in warm neon.

That kind of data-mining could never happen in real life
...right?

Our leads Vee and kinda-sorta Nerve teammate Ian (Franco) don't really feel believable within the context of the film not to mention believable as teenagers. Vee especially takes far too long to suspect something is amiss. If she were truly as brainy as her friends Sydney (Meade) and Tommy (Heizer) thinks she is, she would have bailed right after Ian explains someone just showed up and handed him her favorite book guaranteeing she would meet him. Ian's backstory remains murky until near the end but upon closer scrutiny post-credits his "too-cool-for-school" act feels more like a story contrivance than honest characterization.

What separates Nerve from other YA screen adaptations, and truly makes this film beyond loathsome is its rather cavalier and quite frankly disgusting attitude towards privacy, technology, social media, democratization and human nature. Nerve has an unabashedly negative view of humanity, taking great relish in exposing the dark side of living in an open forum world with open forum expression and open forum consumption. And yes there is something to be said about advancements like the internet, meant to share knowledge and culture, being used as a means to indulge our baser impulses. Yet by being both broad and ordinary, Nerve spits on the nobility of democracy while simultaneously dooming even the smartest among us to a future of celebrity chasing, easy money and permanent distraction. A future entirely based on up or down votes and culpability is but a word that grownups use.

Not since Dirty Harry (1971) have I seen a film so morally backwards and utterly contemptible. While gushing at the excess of it's own high-concept, Nerve burrows into the viewers skull, smuggling in unscrupulous ideas made effective by the film's ordinariness. While watching Nerve I was reminded of Plato's "The Republic"; specifically his passages on late-stage democracy. In it, Plato discusses the risks of a fractured polity, a society where "too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery" and thus becomes ripe for tyranny. I much rather believe as Thomas Jefferson once did that "An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people." Nerve puts that idea into doubt forcing me to fall back on the tired refrain of it's just a movie.

And it is just a movie; the walls of Jericho are not going to be tumbling down just because Emma Roberts made out with Dave Franco at a diner. Yet as a harbinger of what's to come let's hope this film is an out-layer and not the eventual rule.

Final Grade: N/A