The film is aptly named because it's exactly like a cam sex show: visually exciting, intellectually absurd and ultimately satisfying.
Also, I loved Madeline Brewer's performance as much as I hated the laziest plot explanation of the year: "I don't know why, it just happens!"
Interesting concept, well acted, but nothings ever really clearly explained. I thought it was going to be something around deepfakes or something like that, but nope. They never really discuss money, like they never say that she isn't making money when the fake takes over, it's not even really implied since she's still splashing out to talk to the fake and buy her brother gifts and stuff. Some characters aren't really explained and just seem to flip flop, like Barney (I think that's his name) I get it's probably just showing people online are just facade's, but it's just unexplained and out of character in a way. Even the discovery of what she does was odd, it caused like a small rift that was fixed when she came home, one unanswered call to her mother is like the only sort of conflict beyond the discovery at the party and then yeah it's just fine, despite the fact it was in front of her brother, his friends, her mum and seems like various close friends and family, didn't seem to cause any issues when she goes out and stuff. Everything feels sort of inconsequential, since there's no real big effect after something happening. The ending doesn't explain the origins of where the fake came from, why they did it and who did it? so it's a movie with suspects who are almost immediately aren't suspects and no real conclusion which is what this film needed, since it implied a person or people were doing this. Just feels like a cool concept being wasted, by overlooking certain things that needed some addressing to keep the story coherent. Its pretty much a mystery that wasn't really solved and she goes back to work, but tries to be more careful of these people or AI? it just feels like a mess, but again it was well acted and well shot which is a positive, but would recommend a watch just to see what could have been I guess.
Reading the collider interview done after, he said it was supposed to be an algorithm and he was going to show servers and stuff to make it clear, but thought it was distracting, but without that, it makes less sense. He wanted to make it a film about an artist who will stop at nothing to do their craft, but it's never portrayed that way, she just seems to do it as a job to pay bills, but she has some morals. It's interesting especially reading the interview, seeing it like just a machine taking over your life kind of is interesting, but a lack of time spent getting certain things across or explaining things holds the film back.
The ending was extremely disappointing! It did not make sense at all...
So, here's the thing. You gotta kind of use your brain to get what's going on in this movie, and it's never going to directly spell it all out for you. There is an explanation to what happens, but there's not a character in the movie explaining to all the slow thinkers at home "This is what happens and this is why, and this is the motivation." If you accept that going in, then this movie is decent. If you're only half paying attention, or not good at thinking, you're going to end up like 90% of the comment section here and get frustrated.
Do you want to know what really happened here? Alice, aka Lola, had an AI program pretending to be her. The AI program took over her profile and used past videos of her to deduct what her fans were into, and "perfected her formula". Notice how she shot up in rankings when the AI took over, and it was implied during the movie that all of the top girls on the site were really just AI's of the people formerly in charge of their accounts. The top girl had been dead for years, and when she confronts sweaty weirdo he explains to her he's seen it before. A lot of the reviewers here seem to not understand this part, or need it explained why this would happen it seems. Well here's an easy explanation, because if the site is in on it, they take all the profits and no longer need to pay the performer. Wham bam done, explained.
What the movie does less of job explaining is why Alice acts the way she does. Why not tell her mother it's not her in the video, even if she still will want to own up to the fact she does the same thing? Why does she run from the guy who took her out to eat? He does clearly say he helped the other girls get to the top, so maybe what that means is he planned on killing her so her AI could permanently take her place, maybe he killed the other girls already. Who knows, but that's the one open ended thing about this movie that could've been better explained, and would've made me rate it higher.
All in all, it wasn't a bad movie at all, you've just gotta use your brain a little to connect the dots on your own.
This was surprisingly tense. Seems a little unrealistic yet still possible. I wish they would of explained how it happened better.
Whenever I see that a movie is from Blumhouse I just get excited. This one was no different. Really liked this movie. It was intens and creepy, kept me on edge. The only thing I didn't like how they explained the plot. It's not a total let down, the idea of maybe a network of people copying succesful camgirls to get all of their money, creepy enough but I would've liked it better if it turned out to be someone she knew. When watching this we thought that it could've been the awkward girl she bumped into in the supermarket, who maybe did it to Baby first, bumped into Alice , found out she was in the same business and decided to do the same thing to her, out of jealousy or an old grudge. A more personal touch would have made this story more interesting for me but over all this was a good movie.
The film has a strong potential worthy of a Black Mirror episode yet the technology presented in the film is not even explored at its finest. The ending felt bleak but is an interesting choice to make the audience come up with their own theories.
I'm probably being thick here, but I didn't understand the ending! Can someone please explain?!
Really disappointed by this... While there is a decent thriller in here and a good performance from Brewer, it failed to get much into her life as a camgirl and the identity theft is not played out very realistically (my issue isn't really with the twist but how the whole thing is approached).
I'll give Cam props for trying to muster something new; a horror based on the hellscape of camming websites, the bedroom-produced adult industry, and the monsters it can create. Fairly on the nose (heh) with its messaging, it's not bad but it's not great either. Middle of the road, passable horror.
Also, strangest Ubisoft product placement of all time. Every single game in that video store was made by Ubisoft, and Ubisoft were featured in the "The Director Would Like to Thank:" section of the credits. I must now investigate how this came to pass.
An interesting idea of combining Deepfake technology with live chat. Unfortunately, the implementation is quite poor.
i like the idea of the movie but the ending feels super rushed to me.
A fair movie with some great visual effects and editing but it could be way better in plot.Still not a waste of time it kept me interested. 6.4/10
My expectations for this film were too little that I was pleasantly surprised to see how good the film was. Highly recommend it.
This film is about [spoiler]deep fake[/spolier], however the director does not care to explain it. It's a shame, as this technology was a bit SciFi in 2018, but nowadays is more common and dangerous. In fact we need to fight it.
Going into this I didn't know much about the cam girl world, so this film was intriguing from the perspective of simply diving into that realm to learn. Layer on that there's a good mystery at the center of the film and I was engaged throughout. There are a lot of good subjects that warrant more talking or exploration after watching, such as identity, sexual repression, outward/inward perception, deep-fakes, rights in unregulated areas, etc., but even if you don't dive into them the atmosphere and general mystery should keep you in it. I definitely took away a lot after my viewing, and it's likely most people will find things to talk about afterwards as well.
The basic idea had a lot of potential, like explore the economics of online porn, or the social side of things (the whole family story could have been much more), or online identity and theft. But somehow it turned out as an excuse to show a lot of boobs, with cardboard cutout characters, and a total non-explanation and downright stupid ending. Madeleine Brewer did a good job though.
With the exception of the pretagonist, the other characters are flat and without development, and the ending is horrible.
a movie about chaturbate? but less fun :-P no it looks like more like mfc :)
Nice until the ending. We don't know who and how. Her major issue was that the money wasn't going in her account. Next time? I'll just open another account!
i saw a review somewhere calling this "more relatable and realistic than a black mirror episode" which is honestly deeply insulting. how dare you compare this to black mirror. if this were a black mirror episode it'd be the worst in the series by a country mile. incoherent and unsatisfying my time has been WASTEd
it was going well and then ????
Is like they where trying to take the idea of Searching (the movie that also did go out this year) and giving a different criticizes of what the internet is turning all of us now. I think that this movie has the capacity of being a great movie, but the fact of the history doesn't being explain it enough and doesn't having a really good final and storyline, leaved a lot to be desired. Please, just go watch Searching. That is a fucking great movie.
bitch what the fuck they dont explain nothing i want to know about the copy, how they did it???? fuck that movie
I don't know how authentic the twist in the film is, but if anything, it should be yet another reminder that we live too much of our lives online. A good film, and way better than you probably think it's going to be, considering the vague similarities to such films as Girl House.
Shout by PointyBytesBlockedParent2018-11-30T23:23:11Z
The movie could have been a gripping thriller focusing on identity theft or a drama depicting the life of a camgirl. All this movie does is scratch the surface of what could have been.