I discovered this movie while watching Cyberbully. Since that was on YouTube I scrolled the comments and one person suggested this movie which is directed by Hideo Nakata. Hideo Nakata is known for directing Ringu and Dark Water. I really liked those, so I thought that I would give this a try.

I really like how the movie illustrated the chatrooms physically. That was a really cool concept.

We meet 5 teens who feel a bit isolated in their personal lives. One of them starts a chatroom called Chelsea Teens and they meet there and become friends.

We get a look into their lives. What passes for bullying in the UK is so mild. You must think Americans are monsters. The bullying here is so much harsher. Socializing as a teen in the USA is like Mad Max without an actual Thunderdome. So it’s like Road Warrior.

That’s not to take away from what these teens are going through. Struggle is relative. It’s like anxiety. Often times people who do not have it cannot understand people who do.

I’ve been hospitalized for it, without knowing what it was at the time. I had extreme migraines, chest pains, heart palpitations, and numbness in one arm. I thought that I was having a heart attack. They had me hooked up to the heart monitor. Sent me for x-rays and cat scans to see what caused the migraines.

They could find no physical cause for my heart racing and other physical symptoms. That was first time I was told that I had panic attacks and migraines due to anxiety. I had no clue that anxiety could manifest itself physically.

One of the teens suffers from some pretty bad anxiety. He can barely talk to people in real life, but his online persona is more communicative. Another teen seems to suffer from depression and other emotional issues but his online persona seems more confident and talkative.

One teen has body image issues that are made worse by her being a model. Another wants to be noticed by her family.The last teen played by Daniel Kaluuya says that he feels like an experiment to his parents and has a crush on a girl who is much younger than he.

You all know that I am not a fan of washed out color but it works in this because it is used to illustrate how dull their real lives are, because in contrast the scenes in the chatroom have very vivid colors.

This movie is so many things. It’s trippy. It’s real. It’s metaphorical. It’s literal. It is an emotional melodrama and a psychological thriller. It is not a horror movie.

That said, it was just alright. Not great, not awful. Just alright.