12A - 87mins - Documentary - 17th December 2010
Documentary time now with Catfish taking centre stage. Before you start reading this, check out the trailer below first and then come back to me. Right trailer watched? Then lets continue. On the trailer alone your assumptions are pushed towards this being the next Blair Witch Project or something similar but you would be wrong. This is actually quite a hard movie to review without giving away too much of the story but I shall give it my best shot.
Catfish is a documentary following 3 men- Henry, Ariel and in particular Yaniv aka Nev. Nev is a published photographer and one day receives an excellent painting of one of the photos that he has been commissioned for from a young girl Abby. Over several months, he sends her more photos and in return receives more paintings. Through Abby he gets to know her mother, father, brother and older sister Megan as well. The 'Facebook family' as he so aptly calls them.
Henry and Ariel, Nev's brother, are small-time film producers and notice this internet relationship developing. Like all good filmmakers they decide to start following Nev around, much to his discomfort and make a film about it. However it slowly becomes apparent that something is not quit right about Megan and her family so due to a work commitment nearby, they decide to go and visit her to find out exactly what is going on.
I have to say that at some points I was trying to work out whether this movie was being staged as several parts play out that way. Conversations seem slightly forced and not quite natural which you obviously would not get if you were just recording real life. Some believe that the whole movie was staged but I tend to another hypothesis that says that the end of the movie was shot first and then the beginning was shot to set up the ending.
Having expected one thing and then been thrown in a completely different direction deserves credit in itself for some very good advertising/editing from whoever put the trailer together. The one issue being that it is likely to draw in the wrong crowd and alienate some of the people who would appreciate it more. They seem to hope to dupe extra people into watching their movie which is a shame because done another way this story could have been told better.
The movie makes use of the internet with programs such as Google Earth, Facebook and Youtube being heavily relied on to connect the scenes together enforcing the impact that the internet has on the story being told and on everyone's lives in general.
This is not only a hard one to review but in some aspects also to rate. It had me gripped but then lost me towards the end. Regardless it does open up some interesting points for discussion about who is on the other side of the computer screen but I would have preferred to see it either as a docu-horror or a documentary done in another way. And why is the movie called Catfish you ask? Well all will become clear if you watch it.
Rating: C+
Hope you are all in the mood for another animation for next I shall bring you Rio [my review] to see how it compares to April's other animation attempts- Hop and Mars Needs Moms.
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