From the director of the original Ring (who was also behind both it’s sequel and the US remake’s second installment) comes a London-based cyberspace teen psychological shocker, Chatroom.
Five different teens with varying social hang-ups meet online in a chatroom created by William (Aaron Johnson), an introverted teen (and previous self-harmer) who initially appears to lend a sympathetic ear to the group, offering his own words of advice and support. It soon becomes apparent however, that William is actually manipulating his newly found cyber friends, unearthing their weaknesses and failings and exploiting their vulnerabilities to satisfy his own twisted needs. Things threaten to take a turn for the worse when Jim, the soft-spoken member of the group (who has some deep-rooted emotional issues), presents the ideal target for William’s ultimate (and potentially lethal) scheme.
Those who are expecting a dark, modern twist on The Breakfast Club (with liberal lashings of J-Horror thrown in for good measure) will be sorely disappointed with what’s on offer here. The film fails at pretty much every conceivable level and even the title and subject matter now seem extremely archaic and irrelevant, particularly with the advent of online social networking.
A large problem with the film stems from the fact that the director (veteran Japanese horror director Hideo Nakata) appears to really struggle with the language and cultural barrier he’s unaccustomed to. Many of the performances are weirdly off-key (and not in a good way) and are too big and theatrical, which makes for a jarring viewing experience, and leaves the young cast, including upcoming Br(It) girl Imogen Poots and Johnson (so good in Kickass, but completely over-the-top and clichéd in the villain role here), completely adrift. His character’s motivations in particular are extremely petty and odd (William’s rage seems to stem from his novelist mother’s decision to use his older brother as the face and name on the series of Harry Potter/Indian Jones-esque children’s adventure books she’s written!). The film is full of strange inconsequential plot points like this which only serve as an annoying distraction.
The biggest disappointment however, is that the fear and acute sense of foreboding dread which Nakata successfully managed to bring to the forefront in both his original versions of The Ring and Dark Water is completely missing here. Visually, the film looks like an after hours episode of Hollyoaks, and is further hindered by the equally cheesy and outdated cyberspace graphics and imagery. Only one scene where William watches a shocking video of a young Japanese girl, who casually and coolly commits suicide by jumping out of her bedroom window, approaches anything close to resembling the director’s older, respected work.
Originally a stage play, the film adaptation never manages to transcend its original setting, despite the maker’s attempts at providing a visual manifestation for surfing the internet in the form of having the characters actually enter a room (which is designed by William in the pre-credit sequence) where they chat face-to-face, plus a series of corridors filled with busy human activity, which is intended to represent web traffic. These devices wear thin very quickly and a scene in the chatroom where a middle-aged man attempts to pass himself off as a little girl (whose innocent school-girl disguise begins to glitch, sporadically revealing his true form) is just plain embarrassing.
From its ridiculous, laugh-out loud denouement at London Zoo (which has all the cinematic grace of a Children’s BBC drama programme) in which the rest of the chatroom kids show up out of nowhere, to the hilariously contrived ending, the film is a massive misstep for Nakata. The director maybe should have done some online chatting of his own, and consulted his peers about this film’s script and locale before he agreed to make it.
Do yourself a favour and logoff and shut down if this film comes your way.
