Catfish (2010)

"The final forty minutes of the film will take you on an emotional roller-coaster ride that you won't be able to shake for days.", "A bizarre and completely unpredictable mystery.", these are a couple of the very misleading reviews used in Catfish's trailer.

Presented as some sort of real-life thriller, Catfish is actually a pretty boring and bland documentary by two bored young filmmakers, Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, who, in late 2007, decided to document the life of Ariel's brother, Nev. Why? Simply because Nev met a girl, Megan, on Facebook and started a relationship with her. 

Something feels wrong though and he soon starts to wonder how truthful Megan is. He discovers Megan is not who she says she is so he plans a trip to visit her in Michigan (he's from New York) and find out the truth. 

At this point, according to the trailer, Catfish should get really interesting. Some sort of The Black Witch Project should be going on as Nev and the two filmmakers arrive at the barn by Megan's house. Unfortunately, it doesn't. There isn't any shocking revelation and quite frankly I can't believe it came as a shock or even surprised anyone as it is pretty predictable *SPOILER*Megan was never real but just the product of a disturbed and sick person. *SPOILER*

The final forty minutes of the film are pretty much Nev and the other two guys reacting to their findings. Actually, it's more of an explanation than an actual reaction. I don't know, it just feels weird. 

Universal Pictures
Catfish should raise some questions about the Internet and social media, but it's only one the question it raises, is this real or fake? The filmmakers had no reason to make this film in the first place which makes their discovery not so much believable. I think we, the audience, are being catfished with this "documentary". 

7 comments :

  1. The trailers for this movie were SO misleading. One of them made it seem like they were going to stumble upon something really gruesome and it was framed as a horror movie. I didn't hate what I watched, it was interesting enough but this was completely advertised wrong.

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    1. I didn't hate it, I just thought it was a terrible "documentary".

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  2. I don't understand how something like this would become a popular yet even shittier TV show on fucking MTV.

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    1. I don't know in the US, but here in Italy MTV is basically trash TV.

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    2. You don't like MTV either? Well.... awesome. I think it's trash TV too.

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  3. I hated this movie so much when I saw it due to its misleading marketing. I honestly feel the trailers were so unfair though that I probably owe this movie a rewatch at some point.

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    1. I never saw a more misleading trailer than this movie's but the main reason I hated this is that it's just a terrible movie.

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