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16 MOVIES THAT PROVE SOCIAL MEDIA WAS HORRIFYING EVEN BEFORE ELON MUSK BOUGHT
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16 MOVIES THAT PROVE SOCIAL MEDIA WAS HORRIFYING EVEN BEFORE ELON MUSK BOUGHT
TWITTER


HOLLYWOOD HAS ALMOST CAUGHT UP WITH THE IRL NIGHTMARE OF OUR ONLINE LIVES.

By
Ross Johnson

Today 11:30AM

Comments (13)
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Start Slideshow
Screenshot: Assassination Nation/Trailer (Fair Use)

The early days of social media ushered in an era of Web 2.0 fears, the loss of
privacy and the threat of cyberstalking among them, plus the depressing
realization that everyone you went to high school with is overtly racist.

In the decades since, we’ve found new, more existential flaws in the matrix, as
troll farms encourage the distribution of false and damaging information that is
algorithmically delivered to our apps in order to confirm our existing biases,
or maybe make us really angry. But still we scroll. Addicted to the rush of
endorphins brought on by a couple of likes, and to that equally heady sense of
righteous indignation, we’ve lost the sense there’s any particular value to
objective reality.

Opinions about business magnate Elon Musk vary wildly, but this week’s news that
he’s buying Twitter and taking the company private has raised concerns. He
promises to open the platform’s algorithms to public scrutiny, which is probably
a good thing, but what becomes of an already problematic platform once it comes
under the sole control of one of world’s wealthiest individual? A new Eden? Or
further descent into hell? I guess we’ll have to keep scrolling to find out.

Popular entertainment has often struggled to keep up with the pace of
technological change, but we’ve been living in this world long enough that the
movies have made some impressive, entertaining, and darkly funny statements
about our online lives. A few of them even come close to capturing the horrors
of reality.

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HARD CANDY (2005)

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HARD CANDY (2005)

The chat rooms that serve as a key plot point in Hard Candy might as well be
cave paintings from our circa-2022 vantage point. On rewatch, though, there’s
surprisingly little that wouldn’t work just as well (and just as disturbingly)
in a more thoroughly modern context, even if you’d be a bit more likely to find
the creeper slipping into your DMs via your phone. Here, Elliot Page had his
first lead role in a major movie playing against Patrick Wilson, and older
photographer with an interest in underage girls. Page’s character, it turns out,
is neither helpless nor harmless, and has been setting up Wilson To Catch a
Predator-style—and has a fairly unpleasant evening planned for him. One of the
O.G. films dealing with the dark side what we now commonly call social media,
Hard Candy’s horrors seem prescient, especially in a world where there are more
ways than ever to exploit the vulnerable online.

Where to stream: Tubi, Hoopla, Vudu, The Roku Channel, Kanopy, Redbox, Pluto,
Plex

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THE DEN (2013)

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THE DEN (2013)

Beating Unfriended (the next entry on this list) to the punch by about a year,
but without approaching that film’s impressive box office take, The Den has been
largely forgotten—unfortunate, given that it was a trailblazer, if not quite a
masterpiece. Melanie Papalia plays a grad student working on a sociology thesis
exploring the extent to which she’s able to engage in meaningful interactions
via “The Den,” a service very much like Chatroulette that allows users to
connect with strangers at random. Given that this is a horror movie, she soon
sees something she oughtn’t have, and has a hard time convincing anyone to help,
even when he own life is in danger. Though a lot of the plot is fairly by the
numbers, it builds to a clever climax while making the effectively
straightforward point that what we think of (or once thought of) as online
anonymity is maybe not so much.

Where to stream: Digital rental

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List slides


UNFRIENDED (2014)

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UNFRIENDED (2014)

A surprising success and, at the time, a new way of doing found footage,
Unfriended holds up as clever horror innovation, even if the idea of a whole
movie unfolding over Skype is so 2014. There’s often a bit too much going on
(seriously gang: close some windows), but the movie digs into the ways online
interactions can have tragic consequences in the real world (and, apparently,
into the afterlife).

Where to stream: Netflix

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THE SISTERHOOD OF NIGHT (2014)

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THE SISTERHOOD OF NIGHT (2014)

The lesser-known but worthwhile thriller smartly moves The Crucible into the
modern(-ish) age. After her private texts are published by a vengeful classmate,
Mary deletes her social media accounts and starts an offline sisterhood. That
antisocial offline silence, though, is far more interesting and novel than
anything anyone else has got going on, and inspires gossip and innuendo that
eventually gets the whole town in an uproar. It’s a smart take, suggesting that
there’s no escape from our extremely online culture.

Where to stream: Tubi

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RATTER (2015)

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RATTER (2015)

The digital age brought with it a new (and entirely reasonable) set of fears
related to privacy. Are my texts really private? Is that ever-present webcam
really under my own control? The effective, low-budget Ratter stars Ashley
Benson as a grad student who gets hacked by a stalker who begins watching and
listening to her through all of her devices. It’d be a scary premise even
without the horror movie tropes.

Where to stream: Prime Video, The Roku Channel

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NERVE (2016)

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NERVE (2016)

Even with its YA vibe, Nerve manages to make effective points about the perils
of our collective desire to become internet famous. Starring Emma Roberts and
Dave Franco, Nerve deals with the titular online game in which viewers challenge
players to increasingly hazardous real-world tasks with monetary rewards, but
even more highly coveted (and less fungible) views and likes. It doesn’t go
particularly hard, but it’s entertaining and creates a heightened, but
reasonably believable world that captures the social compulsions that can drive
us deeper and deeper down online rabbit holes.

Where to stream: Digital rental

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INGRID GOES WEST (2017)

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INGRID GOES WEST (2017)

The social media age requires us to live in two worlds simultaneously, worlds
that often operate on very different rules; it’s no surprise we can’t all
navigate them both seamlessly. Here, Aubrey Plaza plays Ingrid, an
Insta-obsessed and generally troubled woman who attempts to get a fresh start in
the worst possible way: she ingratiates herself with social media influencer
Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) by kidnapping, and then heroically returning,
her dog. What follows is more darkly comedic than horrific, but certainly
disturbing. The film comments on both our obsession with celebrity and our
desperate need for acknowledgement and attention.

Where to stream: Hulu, Kanopy

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TRAGEDY GIRLS (2017)

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TRAGEDY GIRLS (2017)

High school seniors McKayla Hooper and Sadie Cunningham are having limited
success with their true crime blog “Tragedy Girls.” Willing to do just about
anything to stand apart from the crowd, they bait and capture a serial killer
before deciding that the real way to up their follower count is to continue
committing murders as the killer while reporting the grisly details on their
blog. If Tragedy Girls doesn’t say anything that hasn’t already been said about
what people will do for likes, its over-the-top style, darkly comedic tone, and
refusal to moralize make it a particularly biting entry in the
clicks-at-all-costs sub-genre.

Where to stream: Shudder, The Roku Channel, Hoopla, Tubi, Kanopy, Redbox

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List slides


ASSASSINATION NATION (2018)

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ASSASSINATION NATION (2018)

The directorial debut of future Euphoria mastermind Sam Levinson (who also
penned the screenplay), Assassination Nation opens with a lengthy list of
trigger warnings, then proceeds to justify every one of them over the course of
108 frenetically filmed minutes. This acid-tinged satire explores what happens
to a seemingly bucolic community after a hacker leaks compromising photos of an
anti-gay mayoral candidate, leading to his public suicide. As the ensuing
investigation zeros in on the culprit, more leaks follow, and the suddenly
exposed mean girl texts and salacious photos of the town’s teens soon triggers
(ahem) all-out gender-based street warfare. It’s wild stuff. Use two-factor
authentication, people.

Where to stream: Digital rental

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CAM (2018)

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CAM (2018)

Social media goads us into trying to appear to be something other than we are;
to create a fantasy based on our own lives, but diverging in significant ways.
For many of us, the online version of ourselves is practically a different
person: smarter, more confident, sexier, or just better lit. Cam, in Black
Mirror-style, makes that distinction literal in the story of online sex worker
Alice Ackerman, aka Lola_Lola, who discovers one night that there’s another Lola
out there...a cam girl who’s identical to Alice in appearance and general vibe,
but whose willingness to go further puts her out in front in terms of
viewership. Writer Isa Mazzei’s screenplay draws from her own experiences, and
Madeline Brewer’s strong enough performance sustains the eerie premise.

Where to stream: Netflix

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SEARCHING (2018)

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SEARCHING (2018)

The computer screen thriller earned a glow of prestige with this mystery
starring John Cho and Debra Messing. After his 16-year-old daughter goes missing
with no leads, Cho’s character examines her laptop, diving into an entire world
of photos, videos, and online interactions. Those clues eventually lead him to
form conclusions about his daughter’s death that turn out to be rather off the
mark. Cho is characteristically great in a movie that looks at the ways our
online presence reveals and obscures us.

Where to stream: The Roku Channel, Tubi

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SPREE (2020)

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SPREE (2020)

Stranger Things’ Joe Keery (as dorky rideshare driver Kurt Kunckle) has a can’t
lose plan for staving off boredom and becoming internet famous: he’s going to
murder his passengers and livestream the whole thing. I suppose there’s
something here about the potential horrors of rideshare apps, but it’s mostly
played for dark comedy. Keery’s charm, and a smart twist ending, are highlights.

Where to stream: Hulu

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INITIATION (2020)

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INITIATION (2020)

Cleverly filmed, Initiation has a fair bit going on—perhaps too much—in its
story of a college campus plagued by rapists and power drill-related murders. It
has admirable intentions, but its blending of slasher tropes and serious sexual
assault themes produces mixed results, and isn’t be to every taste. Still, it is
ambitious in its goals, and operates using a clever conceit that’s more than a
gimmick: many of the character beats are revealed via DMs and social feeds that
float over characters’ heads, nodding to the primary ways we all interact in the
2020s.

Where to stream: Digital rental

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THE HATER (2020)

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THE HATER (2020)

Following his expulsion from law school, Tomasz Giemza (Maciej Musiałowski)
begins a dubious smear campaign against a health and fitness guru, drawing the
attention of a public relations firm that’s ultimately more of a troll farm.
Tomasz becomes a rising star as a right-wing social media, at first motivated by
what he sees as the hypocrisy of a wealthy family of liberals, but soon losing
any sense of the value of truth and using racism and homophobia as mere tools in
his arsenal. Circumstances turn his rise into a downward spiral and, eventually,
bloodshed, but Tomasz remains a complex, if not particularly admirable
character, throughout. We’re left wondering if he’s a villain or the victim of a
system designed to breeds people just like him.

Where to stream: Netflix

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HOST (2020)

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HOST (2020)

The all-on-a-screen sub-genre has taken on a new relevance and immediacy in the
age of COVID. The story of a seance-turned-demonic summoning set entirely over
Zoom,  Host was filmed not just with an eye toward the increasing ubiquity of
online interactions beginning in 2020, but also out of a need for new ways to
make movies—the actors in it were never in the same room during production,
which lends a verisimilitude to the performances and gooses the themes of
anxiety and isolation. The spooky bits are effective if not particularly novel,
but the movie pretty effectively captures a bit of pandemic-era zeitgeist.

Where to stream: Shudder

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SHOOK (2021)

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SHOOK (2021)

We’re introduced to several of Shook’s main characters via their Instagram
(well, Instagram-esque) profiles, a clever way of kicking off a film that’s most
interested in exploring the contrast between the real lives of influencers (and
wannabe influencers) and their less-flawless real lives. Daisye Tutor is Mia, a
makeup influencer who becomes the target of an online terror campaign that
forces her into a series of dangerous games in order to save the lives of her
friends. Shook might not be the sharpest or most incisive horror movie dealing
with social media, but it’s an enjoyable bit of creepiness with a point to make.

Where to stream: Shudder

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