I’ve come to the conclusion that the direction of the marketing campaign for Catfish might have faltered a bit. Not that the trailers and posters weren’t ideal, rather I think that they intrigued the audience more than they wanted to.
Catfish is not a thriller. It’s not scary, suspenseful, or violent. There’s no blood or guts. But a movie can be mysterious without having any of the previous mentioned attributes. Yes, Catfish is very Hitchcockian like the trailer states, which seems to be upsetting people after having seen the movie because they thought that it was going to take a drastically dark turn. If Hitchcock were alive during the Facebook era, I think he would have made a movie like this. People seem to forget that Hitchcock directed romances and not just slashers like Psycho.
The main conflict revolves around a young man and his friends paying an impromptu visit to a woman whom one was having a virtual online relationship with, only to find out things are not as they seem. Or maybe I should say that since they were beginning to get suspicious of her before they visited anyway, things were not as they thought they were going to seem even though they expected the unexpected.
Catfish clearly respects all of its characters, including the character of Angela, who is quite remarkable without ever intending to be. She’s one of the most interesting people I’ve seen in a movie in the past decade. The credits role and you leave the theater with great questions in your mind. Why do we have Facebook if we really think we know ourselves that well? What things about ourselves do we like? What do we think other people like? And most importantly, we realize that the things we do everyday without thinking are what make us truly amazing.
Look, I know a lot of people will disagree with me and hate this movie. If you’re looking for a scary thriller, don’t see it. You’ll be disappointed. There’s no scares to be had here. But Catfish is a surreal and oddly touching social commentary on our obsessions with social networking.
/rating_off.gif "1 Star")
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