Catfish

Cinema and the internet are colliding on a regular basis, which means the attraction is now officially mutual, as more movies than ever before seem to be tackling the subject of an online existence. Despite its misleading title (don't expect any seafood in this one), Catfish is another new movie about the internet and its effects on certain people, as seen through a documentary lens. The entire movie is soaked in internet iconography, from its Facebook-inspired narrative to the extreme (over)use of Google maps and street view technology. It's all about one man's life and the twists and turns his story takes when internet communication goes oddly awry.

Actually, it's much more about the twist (singular is more accurate than plural) than it is about the actual life of New Yorker, protographer, and all around nice guy Yaniv "Nev" Schulman. The story begins with Nev's brother Ariel and buddy Henry Joost deciding to document Nev's budding friendship with an eight year old girl named Abby, who lives in Michigan and paints beautiful pictures that she then sends to Nev with friendly messages attached. The pair, separated by more than a decade of life experience, start communicating on Facebook, where Nev begins to learn more about Abby's family.

He has a few short conversations over the phone with Abby's mother Angela, but things take a suddenly romantic turn when Nev discovers Abby's big sister Megan, a beautiful woman who's relatively close to Nev's age and who shares many common interests with him. Nev and Megan begin exchanging messages through Facebook and then later through their phones as their relationship progresses quickly and heatedly. Eventually, frustrated by the absence of physical contact, Nev decides to travel to Michigan to finally meet Megan and see what happens from there.

Ariel and Henry tag along, too, since there wouldn't be a movie without their efforts, and the trio is already slated to visit Colorado in order to shoot some video for a dance group. This gives Catfish an additional excuse to kill some more time before finally travelling into twist territory. To say much more would be to spoil the secret, which wouldn't be too nice, given that even the movie's poster demands that the audience enter the theatre in a clueless state. But I can say that the slow reveal of the truth results in one very chilling and intense sequence, followed by something quite different.

Catfish is perhaps a cautionary tale and the story that Nev, Ariel, and Henry stumble upon rather unwittingly is interesting stuff that will likely intrigue many viewers. But once the smoke clears and all the pieces of the puzzle have been assembled, it's clear that Catfish isn't really much of a movie. Sure, it's a collection of moving images and it tells a story with a beginning, middle, and end, so it certainly fulfils some basic criteria of a cinematic creation. But it isn't ever more than the sum of its parts, which is a considerably small amount.

It's really quite forgettable in the end, beyond a certain sickly feeling that permeates the final thirty minutes or so, and it begins to feel a little dishonest in its eventual execution. It's a clumsy collage of internet imagery and behind-the-scenes footage of Nev staring at the camera with both a smile and a dumbfounded look fighting for control of his face. Nev's a likable guy, but there's really not much of anything going on within the footage that he dominates from start to finish. It's mostly dull, offhanded stuff that likely wouldn't make it past the cutting room floor of other, better documentaries that actually have something to say.

So therein lies the problem I have with Catfish, which remains an entertaining ride on its own terms. As a documentary that began innocently enough, no one could have known where the story would lead and how it would exactly unfold. Considering how conflict-free the whole thing could have been, Ariel and Henry sort of lucked out that Nev's journey went down a previously unexpected road. But once the twist is revealed, it doesn't take long to realize that Ariel and Henry are really most interested in the twist itself and not in taking a closer, more meaningful examination of why the twist is what it is.

In many ways, Catfish ends up wandering down a relatively familiar path that would be best served by some genuine attempt to make sense of this mess and dig deeper into the mysteries of online communication. Instead, the footage is positioned in order to take full advantage of the twist, leaving everything else to fend for itself in a barren wasteland of Google maps and YouTube videos. The movie, as a finished product, never quite grasps its dramatic potential and becomes too obviously manipulative in its emotional approach near the end.

The story begins to feel a little exploitative eventually and it all comes back to how the twist is handled. Instead of using the new direction of their documentary to expose a touching emotional core or to craft a confident commentary on how communication has changed in the digital age, Ariel and Henry simply cobble together the footage of Nev staring at either the computer screen or the camera and then let the post-twist footage do the talking. It's still interesting to watch, but it adds up to little more than a depressing curiosity that simply wants to lazily tug at our heartstrings once the narrative cat is out of the bag.

Taking its place among other internet-themed/inspired movies of late, such as Winnebago Man and The Social Network, Catfish remains a movie with a story that is worth watching. Its plot is a direct result of Nev's desire to build relationships through social media tools and a laptop, so there's no denying how topical its subject matter currently is. But by relying entirely on the natural twist of its story to justify all of the forgettable footage that was captured before, Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost have made a documentary that is creatively corrupt, a weak-kneed display of dubious documentary filmmaking. Catfish suffers from a rank reduction of its themes to mere shock and titillation, which prevents the movie from ever quite making the impression it intends to sell. I strongly believe that Nev, Ariel, and Henry constructed this movie with good intentions, but this Catfish is just a little too rotten for my taste, a well-meaning movie too fascinated with its own luck to bother looking under the surface.