Assassination Nation 2018

What a tarrific movie. Again one of this lucky moments at the sneak preview - I hadn't heard of this movie before, hadn't seen any trailers, previews, reviews - it would have totally passed by me. This is director Sam Levinson's second movie as a director and in it he tells ports the story of Salem (the biggest witch hunt in the history of the USA) into the modern times and retells it as a story under high school teenagers who live an excessive live on social networks, in a society that still sexualizes women, discriminates against the different and stigmatizes those who do what everybody does in secret but get outed publicly. In this tinderbox of a society a hacker is doing his mischief by stealing private data from our teenagers and also the adults surrounding them and publicly displaying them on the internet, which first only leads to mobbing of individuals and personal tragedies but soon the entire situation switches into a nightmare and a new kind of witch hunt.

The first thought I had when the credits of the movie rolled was "Wow". The dangers of social networks of information leaking and the effects this has both on individuals as well as the society in its entirety is not new (there is even a South Park episode on this regarding the browser history); yet how this movie handles it is refreshing. This movie is different - you get thrown into the story without any introduction, you are there with a group of girls hearing their ordinary daily dialogues (which is kind of Tarantinoesque) about every day's boring stuff, to introduce the characters and their way of thinking. We get great story telling and a really great camera work that captivates you right from the beginning. From all the main characters only Bill Skarsgard rings a bell, so I guess all of them are newcomers yet they all play very well. The sets, the scenes, the costumes the colors, everything is trimmed to create really stunning images that are combined with a great soundtrack. But best of all there is an incredibly great one-take dolly shot that is really stunning as well.

But what kind of movie are we actually watching? That is really hard to answer, actually. The movie starts quite heavy, only unfolds its story slowly and is packed with social criticism without being in your face. The first part reminded me of Spring Breakers. However, Assassination Nation is also packed with a morbid sense of humor while staying serious the entire time, becoming more and more a personal drama until it actually turns into a Gore movie that starts reminding you strongly of the movie "The Purge". And if that is not enough we get a finale that has a lot of elements of a classic Rape-Revenge-Movie that slowly drifts into the surreal.

As you can see, this movie is hard to explain and I feel that rather than reading about it, you'd really have to experience this movie yourself to get a picture of it. I myself was captivated for the first minute, I was really curious how this story will unfold, I have been thinking about the message or the messages that this movie probably tries to convey a lot, I was entertained by the gore elements and I had a couple of scenes where I had to laugh. All in all a well rounded movie, with only one critizism that I have: I thought the ending was pretty forseeable. Not too worse, but still.

Other than that, a really great movie! And everything is done on a low budget!

Btw. here is a great "Anatomy of a Scene" with commentary by Sam Levinson, published by The New York Times. Worth seeing, but also spoilery of course: https://youtu.be/VJNLmfyNpqk

Hilarious, disturbing, and unexpectedly intelligent (if you don't get too triggered)

Centred around a quartet of unapologetically (or perhaps unknowingly) shallow teen girls more concerned with getting likes on Instagram than decent grades, and culminating in an orgy of gender-demarcated violence, Assassination Nation is one of those films that seems to set out to try to offend everyone – from the social justice warriors on the left to the second amendment fetishisers on the right, from Millennial snowflakes who have never known life without social media to Baby boomers who just can't get their head around why going viral is so important. And pretty much everyone in between. The satirical ire of writer/director Sam Levinson's (son of Barry Levinson) second feature, however, is aimed more specifically at those who tend to see the proclivities of sexually "aggressive" (i.e., sexually confident) young women through misogyny-tinted glasses as the ruination of society (the type of insecure males who believe the term "toxic masculinity" is an oxymoron). Presumably inspired by the "Sukeban" [boss girl] phenomenon in Japan during the 70s and 80s, the film essentially depicts what might have happened if both the accused and the accusers during the Salem witch trials had had access to social media and assault rifles.

For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/zr8nV

When the movie starts I initially thought 'oh no... is this going to be one of those woke gory movies with lots of unnecessary s*x' and I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised at how good and amusing this movie was.
It starts of with a trigger warning for a bunch of stuff but in hindsight it wasn't that graphic or nasty as some other movies that I've watched. There is a lot of s*x related stuff going on though so if you can't handle that... skip this.

Now that said I like how this movie tackles modern day technology and what it would do to our civilization when all your secrets get outed. That is of course if you are living in a town where a lot of secrets are being hidden and some even illegal secrets. I think what this movie does greatly is show how quickly people would turn on each other. How quickly we judge each other and how quickly things would escalate if you throw in a guns and other weapons... It depicts a gruesome image of how things could play out and yes it is all over the top but is it really? In a land like America where school shootings are what... another week in the life of? That's how we Europeans view it anyway.

The movie reminded me of the purge and almost feels like a prequel to how the Purge would come to be. Now in terms of characters... no great ones. Lily is very unlikable to me even at the end I feel no remorse for her whatsoever. Bex is the only one of the girls I was rooting for to be honest. The only one that has somewhat of a story beside Lily. The rest of the characters are all flat and there for the sake of... well... for the sake of there being characters to kill or shoot at I guess. It doesn't take away from the plot though.

I might be reading too much into it but for me this movie had depth and a definite meaning to it...