If theres one thing that movies/films/excuses for eating popcorn invariably have trouble with, its the zeitgeist of society and technology. Or in plainer terms, what people have at least a vague interest in. This isnt really surprising considering the average gestation of a film, from idea to script to production and then distribution; even a fast turnaround is knocking on the door of a year plus. This means that invariably theres going to be a degree of lag between what was fresh on the page and what can become stale on screen, and
Chatroom runs seemingly headlong into this void, basing its conceit in a virtuality that for all intents and purposes appears anachronistic in the current world of social media domination. Part of the problem may lay in its origin as a stage play, but in the end David Fincher can make great drama out of the supernova that is Facebook, but youve got problems trying to re-ignite something thats popularly defunct. The story revolves around the creation of a, yes, chatroom by William (
Aaron Johnson), a disaffected teenager living under the pain of having a writer mother of Rowlingesque success, who actually seems to care about her sons wellbeing but gets the slightly more psychotic version of your average 17 year old in return. William is the classic, young loner, apparently back in the family fold after some kind of psychological breakdown who turns to the safety of this online anonymity to avoid familial interaction. Yes, its the descent into the unreal to avoid the real; only the unreal starts to become more real than well, you get the picture. In Williams defence, the uber-popular stories scribbled by his mother do revolve around a character named after his two-dimensionally charming older brother and demented persecution complexes have been born from a lot less, but as the fake tomes are of such cloying crapness you d think hed actually be relieved.
Into Williams online world that hes named Chelsea Teens, comes the misfits r us collection of pretty and bored Eva (
Imogen Poots), naïve, smart-girl Emily (
Hannah Murray), disconnected, father-abandoned Jim (
Matthew Beard), and confused, quiet-man Mo (
Daniel Kaluuya), who also just happens to have those all-important technical skills. Initially things are cosily disjointed as they circle and get to know each other, but it soon becomes clear that Williams creation is not just an escape but a literal, mental country of his own making. Unable to have any control over his own life, his purpose is to control everyone elses. And ultimately for the purposes of drama, if not for character development, the idea of control descends into total emotional manipulation, and suggestions of self-destruction. The world of Chatroom is not exclusively focused on Chelsea Teens of course as we are exposed to the inhabitants of other groups and behaviours, the influence of one leading to certain of Williams conclusions; and visually speaking the look into the chatroom collective is relatively successful. Director
Hideo Nakata and production designer
Jon Henson, realising that multiple shots of people hunched over laptops is not particularly immersive, have created a virtual world represented through what appears to be an elegant hotel corridor past its sell-by-date. The rows of doors bearing the names of the rooms, with the virtually dressed, and sometimes physically altered, milling around before choosing their destinations. One would like to think that the rendered decay is a manifestation of the moral degradation of the users, and perhaps the recognition and representation of chatrooms status in the online universe, but I suspect it has more to do with the fact that it looks nice.
Design notwithstanding Chatrooms problems arent just of the time and place variety; it suffers from the particularly British phenomenon of stilted, drama-school acting, and a lack of consistent logic in story or character behaviour (a universal phenomenon). A rapid sequence in which William turns from monster to moral nice boy to monster is so bewildering I figured I must have missed something vital after slipping into my own 20 minute virtual coma. If this all sounds a little harsh its because there is a real disappointment in what has been created; Aaron Johnson, who was so charmingly naturalistic in
Kick-Ass, flounders under his characters two-dimensional schizophrenia, the other actors dragged along in their under-written and by-the-numbers motivations. Hideo Nakata, the creator of two of the best nineties/noughties Japanese horrors,
Ringu and
Dark Water, simply seems out of his depth in the rarefied world of British teen-dom. Quite why he was perceived to be a good fit is a mystery 10 times more interesting than Williams state of mind. Ultimately though blame lays with the writing and the producers/financiers who decided to bring
Enda Walshs play to the screen. Backed up by the success of Walshs
Hunger it may have seemed a winning proposition, but in the current climate this kind of under-developed project doesnt do anyone any favours, and allowing Walsh to translate his own work from stage to screen was patently a fatalistic error. Its written in such simplistic terms its hard to fathom if this is a perception of how teenagers see the world, or whether the writing is simply inept. Although even a
William Goldman touch may have been ineffective against the original plays juvenile onslaught.